


Easy Epiphany

by tansygraves



Category: Banana Bus Squad, The Misfits (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, a slow burn to some extent, edit 2: as of chapter 5 we've got a little bit of smut, edit: i'm just about to post and now it's 4:37 kill me., eventually, hardly beta'd, i got tired of seeing them written as 16 year old girls and tried to write grittier real life shit, i wrote it then i read it now i'm posting it, i'm not sure what yet, it's 4 am at time of posting first chapter, mostly john working through his problems, sue me, this may be 10k words it may be 100k we're just gonna wait and see
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2020-05-12 21:41:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 26,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19237651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tansygraves/pseuds/tansygraves
Summary: “It’s been a while since we’ve done this, huh?” Smitty asked, tone upbeat and nowhere near accusatory. But tone did nothing to dissuade John's acute sense that he was being interrogated.“Yeah, I guess it has been a while,” John said, voice matching Smitty’s. ‘You just gave yourself away by admitting you know exactly what he’s talking about,’ said a part of his brain - part that had been silenced so many times over the years that he hadn’t even heard it speak.“It's good to be doing it again, man,” Smitty said sincerely. “I, uh, kind of missed talking to you. You know, just you.”Just you.“Me too, dude. It’s, uh, quiet enough to actually fucking think when those other idiots aren’t in the call," John said, ignoring the way Smitty's words made his head spin just a little.Think.John doesn't like thinking. Nothing good ever comes of it. There was a time, he's pretty sure, when he admired Smitty's ability to think, but those days are long gone. He knows, now, the fury that thinking wields. He's made himself deaf to his own mind; this way, he'll never think again. But then sound is thrust upon him once more, and he must confront the bedlam, and that which only dwells in his own thoughts.





	1. Just A Normal Fucking Day

**Author's Note:**

> Well, the first fic on this account and my first fic on Archive in two years (nearly to the day!). I hope everyone enjoys, and I hope my writing has improved.
> 
> Like I said in the tags, I get tired of seeing people write grown men like giggling 14-18 year old girls, so as a gay guy myself, I'm giving my own take on it. This will be what I'm hoping is a slightly grittier, more "real" version of what (I imagine) it's like being a closeted public figure, and having very bad interactions and relations with your sexuality in the past. I've gone through some of it, but not all of it. I'm just trying my best!
> 
> This fic is gonna deal with some pretty heavy shit, mostly to do with being gay, internalized homophobia, and actual homophobia, some of which will be violent (edit: also a lot of repressed trauma). Content warnings for this chapter are only use of the word 'faggot,' but it's going to get worse. I'll update the warnings, and leave warnings at the beginning of each chapter.
> 
> This is going to be a slow burn to some extent, like I said in the tags, but I have no idea how for long. This fic has nothing near an outline so it's all in god's hands at this point. I hope you all stick along with me for the ride, and I promise I'll try and update regularly. There will be a lot of angst in this fic but there *will* be a happy ending. I don't really write sad endings when I write fic, it's just not my style. I'm also currently undecided about whether this will be entirely John's POV or with some Smitty POV on the side. We'll see!
> 
> Some notes for reading clarification: I'm mostly calling SMii7Y Jay, possibly sometimes Jaren, throughout this fic. Anything italicized and in 'these' are John's (or any POV's) thoughts, and if it's underlined as well then it's emphasized. EDIT: Not doing this anymore. Read Chapter 3/"You Sound Like Me, Keep Going"'s beginning notes for why.
> 
> Finally, I'm newer to watching SMii7Y and Kryoz's content, and I don't know a lot of their personal backgrounds, what they have and haven't said on camera, what their lives are actually like, etc. etc. If anything's off or incorrent, it's because I didn't know. I'm a pretty studious fact-checker for most of my works, but for the sake of this story, I'm taking some creative liberty with my fictionalized versions of these guys. Hope everyone's alright with that.
> 
> Wow, finally done with that. Let the fic commence, and I hope you enjoy!

                It was a normal day. It was a  _normal_  day. It was a  _normal fucking day_.

                All John was doing was playing CS:GO. Counter Strike fucking Global Offensive; that shit should be the straightest game on the goddamn planet. Why the hell did it happen then? He was just playing off-camera, just playing mindlessly, just trying to de-stress after a long day of Premiere once again screwing him over. It should’ve been like every other evening: he’d finish editing, he’d banter with his friends over Discord for a while, then wind down with video games and an entire pod, go to sleep, and do it all over again. It was repetitive, and getting a little depressing, but it kept him from  _thinking_  too much. He  _had_  been trying to do more of it, heard it was good for the psyche, or the id, or some fucking psychological-therapy-shit. Then  _those_  thoughts had started – started  _again_. He remembered why he’d stopped thinking in the first place. So he returned to the same mundane, life-force-sucking routine. It killed him; but, then again, either option was going to kill him. This just killed him in a safer way. He didn’t have to confront anything this way.

                Deep down, John knew why it had happened. He knew what circumstances led him to the lowest point he’d ever been at, which just so happened to be where he was currently comfortably sitting. Only 20 minutes earlier he’d been talking to Smitty –  _just_ Smitty.  He didn’t talk to  _just_  Smitty all that often; he didn’t confront the real reason, not  _consciously_  at least, because how the fuck could he? He couldn’t come to terms with shit like that. If anything kept him from talking to  _just_  Smitty, it was an over-protective subconscious, brainwashed into developing overwhelming anxiety and paranoia after years of denial and a too-strong sense of self-preservation. John never thought about  _why_  he avoided talking to  _just_  Smitty, he only knew that he did, and an underlying feeling that he shouldn’t think any farther that kept him from doing just that. He’d already found out the havoc that  _thinking_  could wreak.

                And yet, despite all this, John found himself talking with  _just_  Smitty, and had no excuse to leave when only Smitty was left, because only a half-hour earlier he’d said he was posting up in front of his computer for the night and had no plans on moving “any fucking time soon.” And so, when everyone else, first Anthony then Craig then Tyler then Scotty, had in quick succession found a reason to bounce, John was left with no escape route. He hadn’t known (or didn’t want to acknowledge that he knew) why a sense of dread had filled him as each of his friends left, but when Smitty had said in a soft, joking voice “And then there were two,” John’s fight or flight went off stronger than it had since he was a senior in high school, and he suddenly thought it would be far safer to just jump out of his fucking window than stay in the call with Smitty.

                 But John did stay in the call, because that self-sabotaging ( _self-indulg – no_ ) part of his subconscious made him stay, made him banter with Smitty as if they  _weren’t_ the only two people in the call, and as if that fact  _didn’t_  make John feel like a fucking 16-year-old girl left in a dark closet with her –  _no,_ it was  _nothing_  like that. It was... social anxiety.  _Yeah._  Fucking social anxiety. Being alone with the guy he’d known for four fucking years gave him social anxiety. That's why he had frayed nerves.

                But he soldiered through it, and slowly, and to what he would consider his ultimate detriment, the nerves faded, and the dread dissipated. It became comfortable. And familiar. Uncomfortably familiar. It reminded him (shockingly and painfully and all too achingly) of the time when he  _would_  be in a call with  _just_  Smitty, when they’d talk into their old, shitty mics for hours upon hours, late into the night, playing games and shooting the shit and getting way deeper than they’d ever really fucking meant to. That was why John had started  _thinking_. One too many times they’d gotten philosophical or whatever and John had been astounded by how thoughtful and legitimately deep – not fake deep, recycled Jaden Smith Tweet deep, “I smoke cigarettes and think the government sucks” deep, but real fucking  _thoughts_  that sounded fucking  _smart_  and  _made sense_  deep – the loud and vulgar 18-year-old was. John wanted to know what that was like. And so, one night, when he was thoroughly drunk enough, and didn’t care what Smitty would think, he’d asked.

                “How the fuck are you so…” John waved his hands, but the attempt to explain without words was futile: they weren’t video chatting.

                “So what?” Smitty said, laughing, and John’s far-from-sober stomach clenched at such a sound.

                “I don’t know, man, just… sometimes you say things and it’s like…  _shit_ , you know?”

                “How many fucking drinks have you had?” Smitty asked, his tone no less amused.

 _‘Apparently not enough if I can’t just come out and say it_ ,’ a part of John thought. It was silenced by the drunker, dumber part of his brain, rifling through the limited vocabulary it had access to in its state.

                “You know, like, we’re talking or whatever, about fucking, whatever, and you say something, and I’m like,  _shit, that shit makes some sense_ , you know?”

                “Shut up, man.” It must’ve been the alcohol giving him powers, John thought, ‘cause he could’ve sworn Smitty sounded bashful. SMii7Y, being  _humble_? That’d happen as soon as John – well, as soon as hell freezes over.

                “No, dude, like, I’m bein’ fuckin’ serious here,” John insisted. “How do you do that shit?”

                “I mean, I don’t really, I don’t know, think about that kind of thing,” Smitty said. “It just happens, I guess? I say what makes sense, or whatever.” John had a sneaking suspicion Smitty had put down his controller, or taken his hands off his mouse and keyboard – he’d forgotten what Smitty was playing – and was giving this much more thought than John had ever wanted him too. God, this would’ve been a lot better if Smitty was drunk too.

                “What? Are you just the next fucking Plato or something?”

                “Not a gay Greek dude, man,” Smitty said. ‘ _Deflecting_ ,’ the smarter, still-silenced part of his brain thought. But John would’ve paid any amount of money to deafen the part of his brain that took from those six words the thought ‘ _He’s not gay_.’ In what John hoped wouldn't be an in-vain attempt to censor his brain post-thought, he walked across his room, grabbed the bottle of Fireball he’d already partially emptied, and took another large swig, not bothering with the middleman of a glass. If he could forget about that thought by the morning, it’d be fine. It’d  _all be fine_.

                “You okay, man?” Smitty’s voice echoed out of the headset John had taken off.

                John heaved a sigh, took another swig, and made the slightly wiser option of leaving the whiskey on the counter instead of taking it with him to his desk. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine, dude, just had to take a piss.” He forced a laugh, and the fantastic lubricant that was alcohol made it sound like he’d just heard the funniest joke in the world.

                “Do you want an answer?” Smitty asked a few minutes later, after they’d just settled into a tenuously comfortable silence.

                “An answer?” John asked, the equivalent of two more shots making their presence in his bloodstream and his stream of consciousness known. He’d forgotten his question.

                “Yeah, to what you were saying about what I say, or whatever.”

                “Oh, yeah. Uh, yeah, what is it?”

                “I mean, I don’t know if this is it or not, or if it’d work for you, or anyone else, but I just, like, sit and think sometimes. Just lie on my bed, or fucking take a walk or whatever. Not even listen to music, just, you know, be alone with my thoughts.”

                “Gay,” John mumbled, filter non-existent that many drinks in and that many hours into the night.

                “Yeah, yeah, it’s fucking gay,” Smitty said, voice tinged with a laugh, and it’s better that they weren’t video chatting. “But it’s what I do, so like, if you wanna try it or something, I don’t know.”

                “Honestly, sometimes I think I’d do anything to improve this shitty pink lump of flesh in my skull,” John said, laughing in spite of himself before his face fell slack. Fuck, was he depressed-drunk already? He was okay with getting drunk enough to pull the sheet off of his façade. He wasn’t okay with getting drunk enough to take a sledgehammer to the walls that the façade protected.

“Hey, man, don’t sell yourself short.”

                “You flatter me,” John chuckled. ‘ _But there isn’t anything to sell short in the first place_ ,’ a part of his brain that never had any issue being silenced told him. John knew he had to get off the call before that part became not just vocalized in his thoughts, but in the air in front of him. “I think I’ve gotta get to bed, man. I drank way too fucking much, especially for being alone on a fucking Saturday night.”

                “Alright brother, good luck with the hangover,” Smitty said.

                “Don’t fucking remind me,” John groaned. “Let me enjoy the sweet embrace of sleep before I have to deal with that shit.”

                “Night, John.”

                “Night, Smitt.”

                And that was the beginning of what John considered to be the end.

                It was the last late-night call they ever had.

                It was one of the last nights that John lived in the blissful ignorance provided to him by  _not thinking_.

                John had tried what Smitty had suggested, being alone with his thoughts or whatever the fuck it was Smitty did. At first, it had been… kind of fucking boring. For the first day or two he tried, he was restless, couldn’t focus on one thought, let alone an interesting one, and never had any kind of easy epiphany like the ones that Smitty seemed to be able to spout at will. But then, after a day or two, he’d gotten the hang of it. He could focus his train of thought a little better and just kind of follow one thought slowly into another. He found it relaxing. He could turn off his brain, or just let it go on autopilot, and chill out for a fucking minute. But it didn’t fucking last. Of course it couldn’t last.

                It was one day, just like any other, a few days after his talk with Smitty, and he was lying on his bed. His thoughts floated to his friend in question. ‘ _Really glad Smitty suggested this to me… Smitty’s got some good ideas… Smitty’s such a good friend… Smitty’s such a great guy… Smitty’s a pretty good looking guy… God, I’d fucking love it if Smitty –_ ‘

                John bolted upright, suddenly feeling sick to his stomach. He threw his legs over the side of his bed and hunched over them, breathing heavily. What was that – and really, what the  _fuck_  was that?

                ‘ _I didn’t just think that about Smitty. I didn’t just think that about Smitty. I didn’t just think that about Smitty. I don’t think those thoughts. I can’t think those thoughts. It was morbid curiosity. Morbid curiosity. Morbid. Morbid. Gross. Disgusting. Stop it._  _NO_ _._ ’

                That was that.

                John stopped thinking. John stopped talking to  _just_  Smitty. John did whatever he could to never even consider the thought that he’d entertained for barely a second, the thought that nonetheless left ripples in his life that stretched out years from their epicenter. John fell into a pattern, which ultimately led to his success on YouTube, into turning his dream into a career. The catalyst for it all fell into the back on his mind, and became forgotten. John's conscious mind forgot he had ever even thought such a thing. It was a dream, barely that, something another John, a  _different_  John had thought, and it was only something that infected this John’s brain by accident, and so he could just  _forget about it_  and it would be  _fine._  And it was fine. John filled his life with loud noises and avoided any one-on-one situations with Smitty. Camera-gay was just that,  _camera_ -gay, for the fans, for the views, something John did for a bit of shock value every now and again. And that’s all it was.

                Until that fucking call with Smitty 20 minutes ago.

                ‘And then there were two,’ still echoed in John’s mind. He hadn’t said anything – ‘ _Say something, you fucking idiot!’_

                “Bet I’ll last longer than you,” John said in his practiced nonchalance.

                “Ohhh, I can last so much longer than you can,” Smitty said, laughing.

                ‘ _It isn’t camera-gay if there’s no camera_ ,’ thought that sensible part of his brain that continued to be silenced. “You can fucking try, brother, but you’re not gonna win.”

                “Oh, you know I’m gonna try, and you know I’m gonna win.”

                 The banter continued like that for a while: casual, friendly, comfortable. Familiar.  _Uncomfortably familiar_.

                The last time they’d spoken alone like this, John had put Smitty in the hot seat and asked him a personal question. Now, three years later, it was Smitty’s turn to do the same to John. And Smitty, in a roundabout way, took his turn.

                “It’s been a while since we’ve done this, huh?” Smitty asked, tone upbeat and nowhere near accusatory. But tone did nothing to deter John’s sudden feeling of being interrogated.

                “Yeah, I guess it has been a while,” John said, voice matching Smitty’s. ‘ _You just gave yourself away by admitting you know exactly what he’s talking about_ ,’ said a part of his brain; it was the part that had been silenced so many times over the years that he hadn’t even heard it speak.

                “It's good to be doing it again, man,” Smitty said sincerely. “I, uh, kind of missed talking to you. You know,  _just_  you.”

 _Just_  you.

                “Me too, dude. It’s, uh, quiet enough to actually fucking  _think_  when those other idiots aren’t in the call,” John said, ignoring the way Smitty's words made his head spin just a little.

_Think._

                “Fucking tell me about it,” Smitty laughed. “They need to start watching their fucking decibel levels.”

                “Says the guy who’ll yell ‘ _yeet!_ ’” John exaggerated the word in normal SMii7Y fashion, “at the drop of a fucking hat.”

                “Hey, I thought we were on the same side here!”

                “Who said you weren’t one of the idiots I was referring to?” John said, laughing. He was unwittingly letting his guard now, desperate to open up after too many years of continuous denial and distancing himself. Letting himself go while letting himself  _go_. Self-sabotage in the form of finally being free.

                “You know you like me too fucking much to call me an idiot, vape boy,” Smitty shot back, laughing as well, clearly enjoying himself.

                “On yeah? And who told you that, Smitt? Cause I’m afraid to break it to you, but I think you’ve got voices in your head.”

                “Be careful what you say, John, or the voices or gonna tell me to fly to Washington and shut you up.”

                “Come on, Smitty, you know you like me too much to kill me.”

                “Oh yeah? And who told you that, John? Cause I’m afraid to –”

                “Oh, come on, man, at least use your own fucking line,” John said in a mock-disappointed voice.

                “You literally just quoted me!” John only snickered.

                They went back and forth for another few minutes, exchanging good-natured insults, falling back into a routine that John actually  _liked_ , until John could hear, through Smitty’s mic, the buzzing of his phone.

                “Ah shit, my mom’s calling me, man. I've gotta go.”

                “Awww, look at that, Smitty’s a momma’s boy!”

                “Shut the fuck up, dude,” Smitty laughed.

                “Told you I’d last longer.”

                “Shut up!”

                “Tell your mom I enjoyed last night.”

                “I’m going to kick you from this server.”

                “You don’t have permissions, it’s Brian server.”

                “I will add you to a server just to kick you from it.”

                “Byeee, Smitt.”

                “Fuck off, John.”

                John had only smirked, happy and self-satisfied, as Smitty left. His good mood lingered, and the annoyances of the day suddenly seemed small and insignificant. He continued with the CS:GO round he’d been playing, then won, then moved on to another round. Just as normal.

                It  _had been_  a normal fucking day.

                But then he and Smitty were left alone in a chat. Then he and Smitty had fallen back into the groove they’d made years ago, but hadn’t touched in just as long. Then Smitty left John. Smitty left John to  _think_ , without John even knowing he was thinking.

                ‘ _Damn, Smitty’s a good guy… I should really hang out with just Smitty more often… Why did I ever stop?’_ Shoot that guy, run over there. _‘Stop thinking now, idiot, or you’re going to remember something you don’t want to.’_ Shoot the other guy.  _‘Why did_  _I stop?... When was the last time we did this?... I think I was drunk … I asked him about how he thought so well…’_ Run there, plant the bomb, run back.  _‘Turn back, turn back, TURN BACK.’_ Shoot that guy over there, hide here, nearly there, nearly there… _‘Smitty said it was because he thought a lot… And then I tried it… And then I thought… I thought…’_

_‘Good fucking job.’_

                John finally had his easy epiphany.

_‘I’m gay. I’m in love with Smitty.’_

_‘Two for one._ ’

                John didn’t even pause the game, didn’t care that he’d gotten up so quickly his chair fell over. The realization hit him so strongly, with so violent a force, that all he could do was run to his bathroom, kneel over the toilet, and vomit.

                John blindly emptied the contents of his stomach, then flushed the disgusting bile down the pipes, then caught his breath, and then finally, he opened his eyes. He saw his hands clutching the rim of the bowl. He saw his painted nails and be-ringed fingers and long blonde hair falling into his face, and a thousand thoughts hit him all at once: ‘ _I don’t know why you’re so fucking surprised_ ,’ and ‘ _If you hate being one why do you seem to love acting like one?’_  and ‘ _Maybe if you didn’t act like so much of a fucking faggot you wouldn’t_  _be one_ ,’ and ‘ _He was fucking right_.’ The last thought made him retch again, but with nothing else to come up, the raw inside of his throat only constricted painfully.

                John panted, mouth sour, and sat against his wall. Here he was, a grown man, a successful man, living a great life with good friends and the dream job of thousands; here he was, reduced to this. All because of a word. All because he was something he shouldn’t be. All because one little thing in his life had been fucked up before he was even born, ruining his life and his dreams and any fucking prospect he might have had of ever being anywhere near content.

 _‘And the worst thing is I fucking deserve it_.’


	2. Short update (yes, already)

     Sorry, this is totally unnecessary but I just wanted to make this post for the like three people that have said they're interested in the rest of this story (you all are keeping me going, by the way, thank you!)

 

     My point being, I really didn't want to leave more than a week between chapter uploads to keep me on some semblance of a schedule. However, not only did I not story plan, so I'm still figuring out where I want this story to go and how, but I have sleeping issues, and excessive exhaustion has been really screwing me over. I normally do most of my writing in the evening/night, but when I'm ready to collapse by 6 pm it gets a bit hard to be productive during those hours.

 

     Anyway, despite that, I'm coming into my last week of school, and so things should be getting better once that's all done with. I have a family trip the first week of July but I hope to get one if not two chapters out by then.

 

     Again, sorry to already be making an update chapter, I might delete this once the second chapter is posted, I just feel kind of guilty that I haven't been able to get much done.

 

     Thanks everyone for bearing with me, especially seeing as this is so unnecessary and excessive. I'm just gonna post this while literally falling asleep while writing this before I delete it and do nothing lol.

 

     If you're just stumbling across this story I hope you stick with it even after seeing this mess. I'd honestly admire you if you did.

 

     Bye!


	3. Homographs and Synonyms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What was Jason talking about earlier?”  
> “Wha’d’you mean?” Gabe asked, far more preoccupied on the basketball than John.  
> “The gay thing,” John said.   
> “Oh, yeah, funny, huh?” Gabe said, a half-smirk on his face as he thought about it again.  
> After a minute, John gathered the courage to say, “What did he mean?”
> 
> Our first and brief look into John's early life, and what exactly led him to feel how he does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: This is really where I'm beginning to take creative liberty with this story. I have no goddamn clue what John's early life was like, what Raytown, Missouri is like, etc. etc. As far as I know, the backstory I'm crafting for John is 100% false and completely untrue. It's just for the sake of the story.
> 
> Content warnings for this chapter are like usage of the word "gay" meaning "bad," and usage of the word "faggot" and "queer" in non-dialogue.
> 
> Still not beta'd, only read this through while writing it. Barely edited. Not at all thought through; completely stream-of-consciousness writing here. Feel free to point out mistakes in the comments!

                The 90s and the early 2000s, while a generally revolutionary time as far as liberal thinking and open-mindedness went, were not the most forgiving time to be a boy suddenly realizing his sexuality. Being raised in a small town on the edge of Missouri, itself also lying in the outskirts of the Bible belt, never helped John’s ‘condition.’ It’s not like his parents were overtly Christian or staunchly conservative, they weren’t; nor were any of his friends, or most of the people in Raytown. Instead, backwards ideas simply seemed to hang over the town like a fog, kept from being burned off by an unrelenting yet lazy apathy. Everyone just went about their days, habitually attending church every Sunday and taking in stride the beliefs preached by the only man in a 50-mile radius who had the initiative to make up his mind, and even then he only repeated recycled sermons. Whatever Father Lawrence decided his congregation should believe, they believed, and they practiced with all the rigor one practices proper dental hygiene. Father Lawrence said abortion was child murder? It must be child murder. Father Lawrence said all those people coming in from other countries were only here to do wrong? They must be here to do wrong. Father Lawrence said a man loving another man was a sin? Well, then, John must’ve booked himself a ticket to Hell, when at six years old his innocent fantasies about the flaxen-haired altar boy were cut off by Father Lawrence’s copy-pasted recitation of Leviticus 18:22.

                It wasn’t just church, either. Church was dull. Church was the same. Church was going some place and having some man tell you what to think and then thinking it, John figured, and thinking was easy enough. Church was _a_ problem, and became a _larger_ problem as John grew older and began _thinking_ about that thinking, but it wasn’t _the_ problem.

                The 90s and early 2000s were not a forgiving time to be a boy suddenly realizing his sexuality because of _the_ problem. _The_ problem, for John, was school. Particularly, _the people_ at school.

                John grew up when the most unflattering word you could call someone was, irrefutably, ‘gay.’ At first, that meant nothing. Words are just words; a word means a thing, and you use that word when a thing is that thing. ‘Gay’ meant ‘bad.’ ‘Homosexual’ meant ‘a man who likes men,’ and, coincidentally, also meant ‘bad.’ John never thought a third grade English lesson, where he learned about things like synonyms and homographs, would leave such a lasting effect on him.

                Father Lawrence went the more old-fashioned route whenever he felt like his congregation needed to be reminded about the sins of sodomy. He never called these fabled enemies ‘the gays’ or the like, sticking to the much more comfortable terms like ‘homos,’ ‘queers,’ and ‘faggots.’ This is why it came as such a shock to John - who had already begun to fit the pieces together while refusing to look at the puzzle - when Jason, an 8-year-old smartass, loudly blurted out “Like gay?” in response to Mrs. Tackett’s query as to whether the class could think of a homograph, or a word that meant two different things. While Jason was left sniffling from a sharp rap on the wrist, John was left wondering what exactly it was Jason meant by that. The rest of the class seemed to have picked it up well enough, a low murmur of laughter passing across the classroom before Mrs. Tackett silenced the room with a clearing of her throat, but John was empty-handed. He was more curious, as a child, and since Jason’s little stunt had left him with a red mark on his arm, John knew he couldn’t ask Mrs. Tackett.

                “What was Jason talking about earlier?”

                It was recess. John’s friend Gabe was bouncing a ball against a wall, while John leaned against it, watching. In first grade he’d gotten a bloody nose during recess and stained his favourite shirt. He’d kind of lost interest in running around ever since that incident. Besides, he far more preferring his GameBoy, safely tucked under a book and a mess of crumpled paper in his backpack, away from the prying hands of other kids and the prying eyes of the recess aides, either of whom would have eagerly plucked it from his chubby hands.

                “Wha’d’you mean?” Gabe asked, far more preoccupied on the basketball than John.

                “The gay thing,” John said.

                “Oh, yeah, funny, huh?” Gabe said, a half-smirk on his face as he thought about it again.

                After a minute, John gathered the courage to say, “What did he mean?”

                “What?”

“What was funny about it?”

                Gabe caught his ball and looked at John, dumbfounded and a little amused. “You don’t know what gay means?”

                “Of course, I know what gay means.”

                “If you don’t get the joke, you don’t.” Gabe returned to the ball, as if the whole thing was settled.

                “Gay means, like, bad, right?”

                Gabe smirked again. “Like Tackett was saying, words sometimes mean two things. Gay’s also like boys who like boys.”

This small fact, inconsequential to the boy who would, in about nine years’ time, be kicking John in the gut with the same smug look on his face, hit John like a ton of bricks. Gabe wouldn’t be thinking about this exchange when he spat on John with a look of hatred in his eyes, but John sure would be. And he would be again, a whole other nine years after that, sitting on his bathroom floor with the taste of bile in his mouth, wondering what exactly he did to deserve it all. He’d remember the day when he tied it all together, when he found out that the one black piece in an all-white puzzle fit perfectly in the middle, shattering any preconceived notions he had of a normal, happy life. Maybe John had begun to see himself in the men Father Lawrence had said were sinners who deserved to burn, but that was just what Father Lawrence had said. That was just at church. That was just _a_ problem. But then the gap was bridged. No longer was it just what Father Lawrence said, no longer was it just at church; John had begun to see himself in something that was _synonymous_ with the irrefutable word for ‘bad.’ Now it was _the_ problem.

                John ran from the playground and into the boy’s bathroom, where he promptly vomited. He was sent home on account of nausea. Gabe never said a kind word to him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter is short, I just really wanted to get something out! If all goes well, I'll have another, maybe lengthier chapter out tomorrow as well. This is just what I felt like I could write, and it seemed like a proper interlude before diving back into modern-day John's issues. Don't worry, we will definitely be returning more extensively to John's Raytown adventures; none of them will be good.
> 
> Apologies again for the wait, the muse is fickle and she almost always strikes when I'm not near a computer or when it's least convenient. Heading into summer, I'll almost always be near a computer and it will almost always be convenient, so let's hope she finds herself eager to visit.
> 
> Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed. I also always appreciate comments and kudos! It's seriously what keeps me writing.


	4. You Sound Like Me, Keep Going

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "At first a couple months went by and I figured you were just busy, dealing with your own shit, whatever, but then it just… never happened again. You acted totally normal when we recorded but it was never just the two of us and I… fuck it, man, never mind, I’m acting like a teenage girl, forget I fuckin’ said anything, let’s just start recording – ”  
> “Keep going.” The words were out of John’s mouth before he could stop them. “You don’t sound dumb. Keep – keep going.”
> 
> John starts getting better. Or does he?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off, I have to say, I am so sincerely sorry for not updating sooner. I could go into it, and will if anyone's actually interested, but I doubt anyone is, so let's just say all of the very stressful things happened back-to-back or all at once, right when I was the least able or willing to deal with them. The waters are mostly calm, now, though, and I am finally settling into my summer. I made myself sit down and write this chapter, and so I hope it's good. I also forced myself to write not exactly an outline, but more precisely what I want the storyline for the rest of this fic to be, and what I want to fic to include. It looks like we'll have about 25, maybe 30 chapters in total, but completely varying in length, so I'm still not sure how long this will be.
> 
> Also, in light of what Smitty tweeted a couple weeks ago about people calling him his real name, and all of the other guys' responses to it, mainly that they still call and think of him as Smitty anyways, I'll be referring to him as Smitty in this fic from now on (and editing the earlier chapters to be Smitty instead). Once John and Smitt start to have a bit more of a legitimate relationship, however, I will likely have John call him Jay/Jaren, and may go back to referring to him as that in the fic. I know (at least I hope) that Smitty's never gonna read this but I still care about respecting his wishes.
> 
> Also, a brief note about John's thoughts and the 'sides of his mind:' when writing this chapter and looking through the others I realized it might be a little confusing "who" or what is doing the thinking when we see John's thoughts. What I'm trying to do is create essentially three separate voices in John's head: his own personal thoughts; the part of him that is traumatized and angry, which often berates him and tries to keep his feelings hidden from Smitty and himself to repress them altogether; and the small part of him that knows what he's feeling is okay, knows that he needs to cope with his trauma and his emotions, and wants him to talk to Smitty or at least someone about it. This comes from my own personal dealings with similar issues, the fact that you often feel torn between doing the "right" but very terrifying thing or the "wrong" but what you consider to be "safer" thing. In this, I have John's "protective" side just be a bit more abusive to him, due to his trauma and what he's been raised to believe. I've had some friends who have gone through similar things to what this fic's John has gone through, and they often say this is what they had to deal with and work through. Since this is the big part of John's journey that I'm focusing on, I want to try to relay it in his thoughts as best I can.
> 
> Well, I think that's all for the notes. Once again, I'm so sorry for the wait, and I hope you all enjoy!
> 
> Oh yeah, also, not beta'd, not read through, just wanted to get it out!

                The first time John heard Smitty’s voice after _that day_ , he was only an ounce of self-control and an inch from panic away from vomiting again. It had been two days after – two loathsome, torturous days after, during which John could barely bring himself to do more than lie in bed and mope around his house, praying that his mind wouldn’t stray to his recent revelation – when John had realized he actually _would_ need to interact with another person again when his Discord pinged. His Discord had, of course, pinged in the interim, but John had dug himself a hole of terror so deep he had emerged again on the other side, and he was just poking his head out when he heard the alert.

                It was the late morning, and John had drudged himself out of bed a couple hours ago after his second horrible night of sleep – you could hardly even call it sleep; more accurately it resembled John troublesomely tossing back and forth, haunted by images and memories he’d tried many a time to convince himself weren’t real, weren’t _his_ , with small, barely minutes-long sessions of unconsciousness between each distraught trash. At some point during the morning he’d given up, untangled himself from his sheets, and dragged himself to his kitchen. Thank god he’d bought a large carton of muffins from Costco a few days prior, because they were one of the few things that had been keeping him going the past 36 hours. All he’d done yesterday, and was planning to do today, was pick idly at a couple muffins, drink a couple cups of coffee that may or may not have been Irish, and stare blankly at his TV while watching YouTube, or streams, or whatever dumb Netflix show was popular. He was one muffin and one domestic cup of coffee into his day when he’d heard the Discord alert coming from his office.

                For whatever reason, he was compelled to look into this one.

                John pulled himself off the couch, and he idly thought that standing up should be an Olympic sport for depressed people, and almost managed a laugh at his own joke, before he realized that he’d referred to himself as depressed, and pushed the thought as far away from him as quickly as he could.

                He got to his computer and sat down, and wiggled his mouse to make the computer wake up. He hadn’t thought about properly turning it off since he’d last touched it, and that was just before… well, it was two days ago. He opened Discord and looked at the message.

                ‘hey john, what’s up? vc?’

It was, of course, from none other than Smitty. The logical, reasonable side of him, which John was convinced was instead the irresponsible, self-destructive side of him, told him to go talk to Smitty.

                ‘ _Silence is more telling than anything you’ll say to him,_ ’ the side tried to trick him. It worked.

                Against his better judgement, he talked to Smitty.

                “Hey, John!”

                Smitty’s cheerful voice rang through John’s headset, and John’s stomach clenched, in both panic and something else which John didn’t dare give a name to. He quietly evened out his breathing, and remembered what it was like to talk.

                “Hey, Smitt! What’s up?” He sounded perfectly normal. He wondered whether he’d had more practice at this than he’d thought.

                “Ah, nothin’ much. Just looking for somethin’ to do. Need to record, soon, too, ‘n’ I don’t feel like doing a solo vid.”

_‘Don’t say you do too. Don’t say you do too. Don’t say –’_ “Hey, yeah, me too. Wanna see who else is up for it?”

                “Yeah! Sounds good, man.”

                “Alright, tight. Uh, let’s see, maybe Brian, and Ohm? Or –”

                “Wait one sec,” Smitty interrupted. John’s voice stopped dead in its tracks.

                _Does he know?_

_How could he?_

_Have I been that obvious?_

                “W-what’s up?” John asked. He clenched his hand in a fist to keep from hitting his head. Why the fuck did he stutter? ‘ _Now he’s gonna know you’re nervous, and then he’s gonna think something’s up. Great job, idiot.’_

                “Ah, nothing much,” Smitty said, a nonchalance in his voice which clearly indicated it _wasn’t_ nothing much. “It’s just… I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a little bitch.” He laughed a little as he spoke, but he was clearly self-deprecating. “I… When we were talking a couple days ago, just the two of us, and I said it was nice to be doing this again, and you agreed…” Smitty paused for a minute, and in that minute John nearly threw off his headset and deleted Discord off his computer.

                ‘ _See? He did know you knew. He did find it suspicious. What kind of shit have you really gone and gotten yourself into?’_

                “Did you mean it?” Smitty’s voice broke through John’s mental beating. John blinked in surprise before Smitty carried on. “I just mean, you know, it was like forever ago that we just sat on a VC together and talked. We used to do it all the time, for hours, you know? At first a couple months went by and I figured you were just busy, dealing with your own shit, whatever, but then it just… never happened again. You acted totally normal when we recorded but it was never just the two of us and I… fuck it, man, never mind, I’m acting like a teenage girl, forget I fuckin’ said anything, let’s just start recording – ”

                “Keep going.” The words were out of John’s mouth before he could stop them. “You don’t sound dumb. Keep – keep going.”

                It was Smitty’s turn to take a minute. “Okay, fine, I just… when you stopped talking with me, you know, one on one, I wondered if it was me. Like, if I was annoying you, and you just put a front or whatever when we filmed.”

                ‘ _If only you knew how true and yet how wrong you were, Smitt,’_ lamented the side of John that he’d suffocated long ago.

                “No. No,” John said after a moment, all of the words suddenly falling out. “That’s not it at all, Smitt, no. You’re – you’re great, its just, what you said earlier. I am, was, I don’t know, working through my own shit, and just… yeah,” he finished anti-climactically.

                “You don’t have to, like, suffer in silence, you know,” Smitty said, a hint of a laugh in his voice to lighten the mood. “We’ve been friends for forever, you know, you can talk to me, or even one of the other guys, I know they wouldn’t mind.”

                John smiled, and he wasn’t sure if it was because he was genuinely touched by Smitty’s offer or if he was smiling in spite of himself, sure of the fact that Smitty would hardly be so caring were he to know what actually bothered John. “Thanks, Smitt. I just, I don’t know, I gotta work through it on my own, for now, but I, uh… I really appreciate it. I do.”

                “That’s good to hear, man, it is. I hope shit ends up, you know, okay. And if you ever need to vague vent, I’ve gotcha.” Smitty laughed softly as he spoke, masking his genuine concern for John’s situation.

                “I’ll remember, I will,” John said, employing the same technique to hide a different emotion. “So,” he said, clearing the air, and shoved away the thoughts that had managed to worm their way into his brain in the brief interlude of silence. “Ready to record?”

                They passed the remainder of the late morning and afternoon in an endlessly hilarious UNO session with Ohm and Anthony. John wasn’t sure whether or not it was because everyone really was on top of their game as far as comedy went, or because he just hadn’t spoken to another human being in over a day, but he found himself wheezing multiple times. By the time they wrapped, John found his little problem completely out of his mind, and with a sense of hunger finally returned to him.

                “I’d love to stick around, boys,” John said, still half-laughing from a classic BigJigglyPanda rage half an hour ago, “but it’s fucking dinner time.”

                “Why don’t you go eat your fucking wildcard win, you prick,” Anthony hissed, sending the other three into another fit of laughter.

                “You know the cameras are off, right, Jiggly?” Ohm managed to say.

                “Oh, I’d rather the cameras be off with what I’m about to do you, Ohm, _28_ _fucking cards_?!”

                Anothony’s retort only made the other three laugh harder.

                “Oh my god, I’m gonna choke, I swear,” Smitty said between huffs of laughter.

                “Yeah, ‘cause I’m gonna choke you, you fucking milk bag.” Anthony hadn’t had the best of luck, to the great entertainment of the others.

                “Seriously, seriously, I’ve gotta get food, man,” John said as soon as his breathing was steadied. “And then edit all this shit.”

                “We’ve got some good fucking content, boys,” Smitty said, still breathless and half-laughing.

                ‘ _Smitty’s still gasping.’_

“We sure fuckin’ do,” Ohm agreed.

                ‘ _I wonder if that’s what he sounds like when he – ’_

                “See you boys later,” John spat out as naturally as he could manage. He closed Discord as quickly as he could, as if the others would be able to read the thought he’d had through it, and turned away from his computer, heaving.

                ‘ _Why the fuck did I think that? Why the fuck did I even consider that?’_

_‘It’s because you – ’_

_‘ Shut up!’_

All that fucking progress, gone in one fucking second, just because his brain couldn’t stay still and chill for one goddamn second. He’d managed an entire recording session without letting his mind stray to places like that, and that was _in Smitty’s presence_. He was so quickly convinced that he was learning to cope, that that _thing_ he’d thought was just a one-off and he was perfectly normal and he’d be able to be okay after all.

                _‘Like you’d be so lucky,’_ his mind sneered. _‘That wasn’t the mistake. Your deficiency runs deeper than one little lapse and you know it. You’re the mistake.’_

                John’s dinner was another muffin, and cold coffee with a little something extra.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor John. He was doing so well.
> 
> Also, I love Anthony, but we all know a good ol' fashioned Big Jiggly rage is more than amusing. I also wanted to keep trying my hand at the 'casual humorous banter' type of dialogue. It's hard but fun to write, and I hope you all think it's accurate!
> 
> One more time, so sorry for the wait. I just want to be clear that this fic will NOT be abandoned. I may take some time to update but mark my words, I will finish this fic, and hopefully in a timely manner. This is my first piece of long-form work and I will stick to it. Thank you all for joining me on this ride. I can't believe this already has as many hits and kudos as it does! Thanks so much for the kudos, and even more for the comments, I always love hearing what people have to say. Seriously, if you comment, you're an angel, it's what keeps me writing.
> 
> Have a good day/night, and I'll see you with the next chapter soon!


	5. I Didn't Know it Was A Crime

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John began life as so many children did: bright-eyed, excited, and ready to be shown the world. In many ways, he was lucky. The light was not beat out of him, he was not taught that happiness was not an option. Instead, he was more closely taught nothing at all, the stolid air of Raytown unsure of how to deal with such an optimistic thing and unwilling to learn. He was not roughed up and shoved into a ditch, but left on a directionless path in the middle of the dark, unwelcoming woods.
> 
> A young John begins to learn exactly what the world does to people it doesn't like.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off, I'm going to be a broken record and apologize for how late this is. This was meant to be finished a week ago (I had what I wanted to write planned out and everything!) but then a summer cold hit me and I was out of commission for a few days. I'm finally better, and this chapter is finished.
> 
> Also, sorry in advance, part of this is very metaphoric and wordy. You might as well learn sooner rather than later that this is actually how I write, lol. I stretch my metaphors as thin as my patience is on a daily basis. I feel no shame.
> 
> As always, disclaimer, I don't know anything about John's personal life or his past, or anything about what it's like to grow up in Raytown, Missouri. This is a completely fictionalized version of John's life and the town he was born in.
> 
> Hope you enjoy this chapter! Next one is partially-planned and, god willing, will be up soon.
> 
> Not beta'd or edited. Content warning for use of the word "faggot" and "queer" as derogatory terms.

                Raytown, Missouri was a depressing place to grow up. It wasn’t one thing in particular that had laid scourge upon the place, but rather a cumulative exhaustion that seeped into every aspect of the town's life, wearing down everyone and everything until the deterioration only produced more fumes. It was not an uncommon cycle in places like Raytown. Places where the addresses on the mailboxes were hardly ever completely legible, either the hand-painted numbers worn down in the years since someone had cared, or a couple of the pasted-on tiles having fallen in the same amount of time. The mailboxes were as indifferent to their location as their owners were to theirs.

                John began life as so many children did: bright-eyed, excited, and ready to be shown the world. In many ways, he was lucky. The light was not beat out of him, he was not taught that happiness was not an option. Instead, he was more closely taught nothing at all, the stolid air of Raytown unsure of how to deal with such an optimistic thing and unwilling to learn. He was not roughed up and shoved into a ditch, but left on a directionless path in the middle of the dark, unwelcoming woods.

                Lacking a guide, the young children of Raytown took matters into their own hands, blind to not just the consequence but the inevitable end their situation dictated, blind even to the situation itself. They sought to make their own way, half-following the trampled growth indicative of where their older brothers and sisters had already trod, had already tried to find a way out of the forest of youth, unaware that this path had no end, either, that their siblings were long since lost to the wiles of the forest. The children of Raytown were marched into the forest and left to find the pastures of the outside world themselves; most remained there, or found their way back to Raytown, never to attempt the journey again. One in a million crawled to the other side. Fewer still bore no scars from their time in the woods.

                John beat the first statistic.

                For the second, he was not so lucky.

                While John still followed the other children through the woods, little was wrong with his childhood. His elementary school days, in the beginning, were relatively fine. He knew that as long as he never stepped out of line, never tried to claim himself leader of the group or propose a different path through the woods, that he would be fine. He saw the way the other boys took cues from their brothers and from instinct, how they’d knew to shove the undergrowth and break the branches that stood in their way. The boys, especially as they grew, easily translated this into shoving bodies and breaking noses.

                John, unwilling to fall victim to the tyranny nor to the same fate, chose to stay in line, and stick to the sidelines. “Don’t make yourself a target and put yourself in a position where you need to prove you’re not one,” became John’s unofficial, mostly subconscious mantra. He was too young, really, to be that aware of why he did what he did, he just did what he was sure would keep him out of either end of trouble. But in the end, the choice wasn’t his to make.

                “Hey, faggot.”

                The first time John had heard those words were the first time they were directed at him. He was in fifth grade – for three years he had avoided antagonization, and simply faced exclusion. Exclusion he could deal with; he yearned for friends, as anyone who is lonely does, but he found it easy to cope with. All he needed for company during recess was his Gameboy and a corner of the playground hidden from the recess monitors, who wouldn’t take kindly to his Gameboy being at school, let alone out of his bag.

                But, as John would continue to learn, as broken and angry kids become more broken and more angry, they require greater measures to feel whole, greater actions to express their anger. Excluding a peer was no longer enough of a show of power and derision. They turned first to name-calling.

                John was acquainted with the word ‘faggot.’ It was one of Father Lawrence’s favourite terms for ‘the homosexuals,’ along with ‘queers’ and ‘sodomites.’ But he’d never heard someone directly be referred to as such a thing. The way Father Lawrence made it out, ‘faggot’ didn’t indicate a single person, but more so a sinful, corrupt conglomerate who couldn’t find Jesus even if they wanted to.

                John looked up from where he sat, sat against a brick wall that hid him from most of the playground, playing his Gameboy, and was greeted by the face of Derick. The kid had an unfortunate face: it was all-too square, his nose was crooked as a result of his older brother, Tristan, and his black hair was always poorly gelled into spikes. Derick, despite his looks, was one of the top dogs of John’s year group. Many kids idolized Derick and his older brother, and even more so their angry, unyielding characters, making Derick top-contender for undisputed leader. What he said, went.

                “What?” John asked, confused as to what exactly Derick was referring to. The dark clouds that had been on the horizons all day seemed to suddenly swallow the sky; it was late April, and nearing the end of the school year. John had become used to his exile, and optimistically hoped he’d be able to continue going unnoticed until the year finished. Then he’d start middle school in the fall, and that would have to be better, right?

                “What do you mean, ‘what?’ You some kind of retard? I’m talking to you.”

                “I’m not a – What do you want?”

                “Nothin’,” Derick grunted. “Faggot,” he added.

                “I’m not a faggot,” John said. The word felt uncomfortable in his mouth.

                “Oh, yeah?” Derick said, as if John had just tried to tell him that the sky wasn’t blue. “That’s not what your old friend Gabe says.”

                Gabe. John hadn’t thought about Gabe in a while. Any thoughts of him just drudged up sour memories of a minor revelation John would’ve preferred to forget. “Well, whatever he said was wrong, I haven’t talked to him since we were seven.”

                “Once a fag, always a fag, that’s what my daddy says,” Derick shot back. “And Father Lawrence, too.”

                “Well, whatever, I’m still not one.” John avoided saying the word.

                “But Gabe says you ran away crying after he told you what Jason’s gay joke meant. Sounds pretty faggy to me. Only fags cry.”

                “I’m not a fag,” John insisted, but his voice wavered and he felt tears prick at his eyes.

                _Don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry_ , he told himself. It would hardly help his case.

                “Whatever the fuck you say, queer,” he sneered. Derick pushed John’s shoulder with his foot, enough to push John to the ground. He laughed as he walked away, returning to the playground, properly sated. John had only fallen down from a sitting position, not enough to properly hurt him, but he was hurt by the action and the feelings behind it nonetheless. He’d seen kids be pushed by others, but that was only when they acted out of turn, jostling someone else or trying to steal a ball. John didn’t think he’d retaliate in the same way himself, but in the context of the recess culture, it made sense. One of the kids on the lower rung had tested one of the kids on the higher rung, and the kid higher-up punished the lower one accordingly. But John hadn’t done anything. It was one of the benefits of being a loner – you didn’t do anything to step out of line, so you never faced punishment.

                The taunting continued. Derick, or sometimes some of the other higher-ups, would find John in his little corner and berate him for a few minutes. Call him names, give him a shove or two; never enough to draw the attention of other kids or the recess monitor, but enough for John to grow cautious as the final months of school dragged on. As soon as he heard footsteps approaching, he’d shove his Gameboy into his hoodie pocket and steel himself for whatever they decided to throw at him that day. He could take a brief interlude of jeers and derision; it the same thing at the same time nearly every day, in small, easy-to-take doses.

                But such things never stay small and easy-to-take. John had been confused by his seemingly undeserved punishment – little did he know his existence was soon to prove reason for punishment enough. He was kicked out of the group that kicked their way through the forest, and went off to try and find his own way out. Never had he challenged the leader, never had he tried to suggest a new direction, never had he done anything which he had grown up to believe warranted such animosity. But there was one more action, one more act, which John had never been taught, explicitly, was not only allowed, but arguably the worst of all sins to commit.

                John was not power-hungry. John was not insubordinate. But John _was_ different. And that was the worst thing to be of all.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter! Poor old John is only facing the beginning of what the youth of Raytown, Missouri are going to throw at him. Wish him good luck (he's gonna need it).
> 
> Thank you all for reading and sticking with me on this! The comments on my last chapter especially were so nice to see while I was sick. Please comment if you like this (repeat commenters are welcome!), as it really does help me write quicker! Hope you all enjoy your day/evening/night, and I'll see you all with the next chapter.


	6. Up and Up and Down Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John liked to consider himself on the road to recovery. Recovery was good, right? It meant he’d realized he had a problem and was working towards fixing it. The first step in the twelve-step program: admission. If only John’s solution to his self-made problem wasn’t setting him up for another twelve steps on the other side.
> 
> John tries to get better. It works. Until it doesn't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! Sorry for taking a while getting this chapter up. I was originally intended to release this chapter and the next one (and possibly even the one after that) all at once to make up for this break, but this one is finished now and I'm anxious to get something up. I had to take a short break from writing to focus on some things for school (guess who's studying Latin and can barely think about anything else?) and then I took a few days to write just for myself and some other projects to get back into it, but now we're back!
> 
> I also want to preface this chapter with two things: a) there's a very small bit of smut in this, and b) this is the first time I've ever posted anything explicit to the internet. I've written some smut in my time, but it's never been posted anywhere, so be nice-ish. This is also my first RPF smut, and it was admittedly a bit weird to write. I'm gonna have to get over it, though, 'cause there's gonna be a lot more in a handful of chapters. Stay tuned, folks ;)
> 
> As they're already in production, the next two chapters should be up soon, and will probably be released at the same time. But in the meantime, I hope you all enjoy this chapter! It's a bit longer than the previous three chapters, and with any luck it'll be good.
> 
> The continued support on this fic has been fantastic! Thank you all so much for your kudos and comments, they mean the world to me! You've all been amazing, and if anyone wants to comment or comment again, please do, on this work or any others you read. Us authors will take any and all validation we can get!
> 
> Obligatory: not very edited and not beta'd; feedback is very welcome; the characters in this story are a FICTIONALIZED version of Smitty and John, and none of the events in this story are intended to be presented as fact.
> 
> Thanks again for reading, and enjoy!

John liked to consider himself on the road to recovery. Recovery was good, right? It meant he’d realized he had a problem and was working towards fixing it. The first step in the twelve-step program: admission. If only John’s solution to his self-made problem wasn’t setting him up for another twelve steps on the other side.

                Two weeks had passed since John’s second (third? Fourth? Fortieth?) breakdown. He’d spent the first few days in an inebriated stupor – he couldn’t remember if he’d reached for the bottle or the pipe first – and he’d only pulled himself into sobriety when the incessant pestering on Twitter had driven him to get his act together. He had footage to edit and videos to post. Besides, if the content stopped, the money stopped. And if the money stops, the groggy haze, free of problems and worries and most importantly _thoughts_ (he wasn’t quite sure which ones he was happy were being silenced, anymore), stops as well. Who cared if the only time John wasn’t enveloped by the painless haze was when he was making videos that were doing nothing more than providing the fodder his drug- and alcohol-fueled fog machine? He was getting by. It was all he’d never known how to do.

                And yet, during his 24 hours with a clear mind, that painful process known by the name ‘thinking’ had unfortunately been added back to his repertoire of brain functions. And, even more unfortunately, his brain had been making use of it.

                _‘I really need to think about what I’m doing to myself. This isn’t fucking okay, forget sustainable…’_

                _‘Dangerous, dangerous, dangerous, dangerous_ ,’ his mind chanted. It was as if it were watching John’s thought processes through a distorted third-person, knowing exactly what kind of buried cache John would find if he kept digging through all of the shit in his brain. Sometimes it felt like the smartest part of John’s brain, with it always knowing exactly what thought came next and exactly what it would do. Maybe that was why John always deferred to it.

                _‘No, you’re right, you have to consider what this is doing to you_ ,’ his mind insisted. _‘And your relationships,’_ it added without being heard.

                _‘I need to confront this. This… problem isn’t a problem here. Not anymore. I don’t have to keep acting like this.’_ John himself was almost astounded at the amount of clarity and logic in his own statements. Had he just backlogged a shit-ton of rational thought?

                _‘No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,’_ his brain repeated, and John felt his breathing get quicker and shorter. He felt his chest begin to constrict.

                _‘Breathe. Deeply, slowly,’_ something in him commanded. John did the best he could to follow the order, and his breathing, which had quickly become choked and stutter slowly began to revert to normal. A sick heavy feeling still lingered in his chest, and he didn’t think it was solely due to his lapse in oxygen intake.

                _‘Confront it,’_ his brain instructed, minutes after John’s breathing issues had subsided but while he continued to take careful, intentioned breaths.

“But confront what?” he muttered to himself. “And how?” John wasn’t sure when he became one of the loonies who talked to themselves about their mental insufficiencies, but he vaguely thought that when some doctor or another asked him when “it all” began, he’d have a specific moment to point to. The idea made him chuckle to himself.

                His brain was silent for a moment, and John was sadly reminded that he didn’t actually have an advice machine, detached from his actual problems, rigged up in his brain. It was all up to him. He sighed aloud.

                _‘Start with the source of the problem,’_ he thought.

                _‘Makes enough sense, I suppose._ _If I knew what the problem even was.’_

                _‘Maybe if you spent some time actually looking at your issues instead of running to weed and hard alcohol the minute they come up like some sort of pussy, you can figure out a fucking pattern.’_

                A pattern? The fuck was that supposed to mean?

                _‘Maybe it means that there’s one specific thing that’s causing you to freak out in the first place, idiot.’_

                Oh. Well, he supposed he didn’t have to be _quite_ so harsh about it, but he wasn’t so fucking clueless to his problem that he couldn’t find a re-occurring theme or two.

                _Smitty_.

                Whatever set him off, Smitty always seemed to feature in it. He didn’t exactly want to outline the details, since another binge probably wasn’t very healthy, and he still had more videos to edit. But he could still study Smitty as a potential root of the issue. Even if the muffled part of his mind knew with great surety exactly what role Smitty played in all of this, and it surely wasn’t as the _cause_.

                What did John think was a good way to research? Pull up Smitty’s Instagram on his phone, of course. Taking notes on a potential enemy was obviously a –

                A fruitless effort was what it was. All it took was a glance at Smitty’s face for a grin to spread across John’s face. He realized he hadn’t looked at Smitty since this whole ordeal started (a strange aspect of their line of work) and he hadn’t realized quite how… happy it would make him. It was as if all of his thoughts halted where they were, froze in time for just a second. Just to appreciate Smitty’s face.

                Smitty’s face pics were sparse, of course, and all posted within the past few months since his face reveal, but scrolling through Smitty’s account still made John feel better than he had in months. His heart skipped a beat when he saw a post, three years old now, of a picture of “Subscribe to kryozgaming” scribbled onto a plastic cup. His smile grew, and he got to the end of Smitty’s posts, then returned to the top, and allowed himself to stare at his friend for another few moments.

                _‘Small steps. Take it slowly. Gradually,’_ that authoritative but responsible part of his brain said. John nodded to himself.

                “Taking it slow,” he murmured, gaze fixed thoughtfully on Smitty’s face. “I can do that.”

                Thus began John’s stilted recovery. He’d fully embraced his newfound tendency to stare at photos of Smitty (he’d dipped into his own personal stash of pictures he’d taken with Smitty over the years), with Smitty’s videos, mainly solos, soon being added to the mix. But the picture-staring and video-watching was hard without intrusive thoughts (of _any_ kind) knocking down his weakly-built walls. Within days John had begun to mix medication.

                He’d developed a schedule. Get through the day without dipping into anything – without dipping into thoughts, without dipping into the stash. Edit, record, reply to fans on Twitter and Insta, do business during the day. And when he clocked out was when he dove in. Smoke a bowl or down a shot or two, anything that would let him indulge his new guilty pleasure guiltlessly. Instead of a haze full of depression and nothingness, it was a haze accompanied with a soft, illogical (what John assumed was illogical, in such a state) satisfaction. Look over the same collection of pictures, watch back the same playlist of videos until he passed out. He’d wake up, sometimes with a hangover, and do the whole thing over again.

                He called it recovery because he wanted to believe it was. And in a very twisted, mostly incorrect sense, it was. John had become happier, more productive, a bit better organized since he’d fallen into this little routine. He didn’t want to acknowledge, didn’t _let_ himself acknowledge, the fact that it was ultimately unhealthy and unsustainable. For the time being, he was satiating both hissing, snarling, quarreling sides of his brain. He was dealing with the problem while staying as far away from it as humanly possible. He was letting himself indulge and feel his feelings, while telling himself he was doing it for completely different reasons.

                _‘I have good memories with Smitty,’_ he reasoned one night, two weeks after the breakdown, when he was high off his ass and floating happily in the clouds. ‘ _That all this is. That’s why it makes me so happy. I’m remembering the good times I’ve had with a friend, that’s all this is. That’s all this is. That’s all this is.’_

                The mantra thrummed through his chest as laid in bed and swiped through the photos of Smitty on his phone, one of Smitty’s videos playing on his laptop.

                _‘Look at how cute his smile is,’_ he thought – or, the weed made him think. _‘He looks so nice like that. And when he laughs.’_ The thought made his mind drift to the now many times he’d been with Smitty in real life. Hearing Smitty laugh over a voice chat was one thing, but seeing a smile spread across his face and reach his eyes as his eyes closed and his mouth fell open in raucous laughter, all because of something real fucking stupid John had said, was another thing entirely. Now all John could think about was every time this had ever happened, every time he’d ever made Smitty smile or laugh or look happy, and occasions John hadn’t even known he’d filed away flooded his brain. The weed dulled the panic that had begun screaming in the back of his mind.

                John’s hand moved toward the waistband of his sweats. It seemed like such a strange thing to him – _he_ could make _Smitty_ laugh. He could make him _happy_. Make his brain release dopamine just because John had thought of something dumb off-the-cuff and Smitty found it amusing. Paying as little attention to what his actions clearly meant, John’s hand slipped under his sweats and boxers and found his cock. He was only slightly surprised to already find himself half-hard: it wasn’t the first time he’d gotten a bit “excited” after sobering down. He idly started to stroke himself as Smitty’s wide smile and warm laugh stayed at the forefront of his mind.

Normally, for John, jerking off was a quick procedure; it was business that needed to be taken care of, something that couldn’t really be helped, nothing more than a stress-relief he’d taken up in his late teenage years after he’d gotten over the religion-imposed guilt over it. But now, detached just enough from reality and supplied with an actual stimulant, he found himself taking his time, enjoying it.

_‘Cute smile, cute laugh, cute voice, cute face, Smitty…’_

His hand picked up the pace, and his mouth parted as his breathing came shorter and breathier. His chest tightened in a far more pleasant way than it had over a week prior.

_‘This is wrong,’_ the scared and angry voice in his mind scolded, doing everything it could to get through to John through his high. _‘You’re jerking yourself off to the thought of your friend. Not only your friend – a boy.’_

                But how could it be wrong? How, John thought, could it be wrong when the pleasure surging through him was the best thing he’d felt in weeks, months, years, when seeing Smitty in such a different light, in a way that cast him as more than a friend, felt so _right_?

                It only took another couple of minutes until John was quickly grasping for the tissues on his bedside table, and he came a moment later, letting out a final breath that was too close to a moan. As he caught his breath, the deafening, blinding, comforting haze he’d been in all evening was cast away with a gust of wind, bringing nothing but a bone-chilling panic and the sight of a storm on the horizon.

                _‘What did I do? What the fuck did I just do?’_

                This was the nail in John’s coffin. It couldn’t be explained away by calling it a platonic nicety or a morbidly curious thought. There was no logical reason why John did this; the only motivation behind the action was an illogical, unapproachable, dooming thing, an idea John had thought he’d stopped considering a long time ago.

                John lurched out of his bed and quickly stumbled to his bathroom, tossing the clump of tissues into the toilet and flushing them, only after briefly considering burning them. He didn’t remember getting sick again, but one moment he was standing in his bathroom, and the next he was in his kitchen, bleaching the sour taste in his mouth away with a shot of vodka.

                How the fuck did he keep ending up like this?

                John couldn’t be sure how much of the bottle he’d taken in for it to have taken him to this place. Fear had left him, logic had left him, all that remained was a burning sensation in his throat and a numbness that felt all too much like crushing hopelessness.

                Fear and logic leaving him was probably for the better. Because if they hadn’t, one of them – he wasn’t sure which one it would’ve been, or which one he would’ve _thought_ it was – probably would have stopped him from sitting down in front of his computer, opening Discord, and getting in a channel with whichever one of his friends was still awake and still on Discord but alone.

                Maybe if he’d seen that the only person who fit the criteria was Smitty before clicking, panic would have returned before he could damn himself.

                It didn’t.

                “Hey, John.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Our poor boy John keeps getting put through the wringer. I don't know why I'm doing this to him or myself. It won't be the last time, either. Sorry?
> 
> As always, the mental issues John is going through is completely based off of my own and others I know's experiences, and I am in no way intending to present this as how everyone copes with repressed trauma and internalized homophobia, as John is here.
> 
> Fun fact, John getting off to Smitty's laugh and smile while high and sad is based off a story a friend has told me of him doing the same thing. He'll never see this so he'll never know, but this is definitely a call-out for him being so sappy and romantic that he actually Did That. Is this TMI? Maybe, but I don't care.
> 
> Also, did anyone else absolutely thrive off of seeing IRL Smitty (and five seconds of John) in Mini's new video? I love seeing them interact IRL. We've only gotten to see it a couple times, but man, I love it whenever we get it.
> 
> Anyway, I'm gonna cut this off before I reach my character limit. Hope you enjoyed this chapter, and please comment and leave kudos if you're so inclined!


	7. Sometimes Things Begin to Look Better

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isolation, ridicule, and the gritting of his teeth in the face of both: that was John’s life for the first year and a half of middle school. That was his situation; he simply lived with it. But then, as seventh grade neared its end, as the chill of the winter faded into the warmth and rainfall of April, a new student transferred to Raytown Middle School.
> 
> John's school life just keeps getting worse. Until, maybe, it gets a bit better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow! I managed to get an update out at a reasonable time. Wacky shit, boys. I swear, blasting music is the only things that lets me get over the ADHD and actually write these chapters. Bless up for the good jams.
> 
> Anyway, here's the next chapter! We leave the present-day cliffhanger where it is and dive back into John's Raytown past. Maybe things aren't as bad as they seem for John?
> 
> Also, seeing Smitty's cute face on Twitter got me shook as always. John's such a lucky guy smh.
> 
> Sidenote, a plug, I'll be posting a oneshot fic on here either later tonight or in the next couple days. It's for Marble Hornets, Jay/Tim. If any of you are so inclined, maybe give it a read if you like MH? A lot more Marble Hornets/Slenderverse fics will be being written on this account, so if you're a fan of any of those and like my writing, maybe keep your eyes peeled. The mood will be very gritty and sad.
> 
> As always, the requisite I know nothing about Raytown, Missouri nor John's upbringing, and everything mentioned about both are completely fictitious and are only for the sake of the narrative. Not beta'd or editing. Comments and polite criticism are welcome, as always!
> 
> Content warning for use of slurs, mainly faggot, and a mention of AIDs in a derogatory and offensive way.
> 
> Hope you all enjoy!

                Middle school was easily the shittiest part of John’s life so far. Everything he’d been so sure about in fifth grade, two years which seemed like an eternity ago, turned out to be completely, utterly, and in no fucking way whatsoever true.

                He’d idiotically assumed that the attention on him would fade once they entered middle school. Three elementary schools fed into it, after all, so there’d be dozens, if not a couple hundred, more people. Besides that, he’s thought the bullies might just… grow out of it. He didn’t have any older siblings, so he had little to no frame of reference for how older kids acted. But they’d have to lay off him, right? There were so many more important things to worry about in middle school, picking on some kid who’d cried when he was seven had to be pretty low on the priority list.

                John would’ve liked to kick some sense into his younger self for being so fucking naïve.

                If John had learned anything in the past two years – and he’d certainly learned jack shit from the worn-out, jaded teachers of Raytown, Missouri, who could barely give a single fucking shit whether their students learned the material, if there was even material at all – it was that kids only got more ruthless as they got older. Their anger grew with them. And they had to expel it somewhere.

                John wasn’t the only target of bullying, anymore. The kids who lashed out at others were spit on and shoved back into place, but they presented just like the others, vitriolic and quick to violence and eager for any sort of bloodshed, be it metaphoric or literal, they could get their eyes on. They were allowed into the lower rungs of the pack, gifted with a smidge of authority and, most importantly, immunity. But this left the kids like John, the kids who were _different_ , with great, blinding spotlights on them. The boys who were sensitive, the girls who were kind, the kids who didn’t keep up with every new trend and found no pleasure in dropping everything and running at the rumor of a fistfight or hair-pulling match going down out back. But even so, enough of the outcasts could find their comrades. The boys who laughed at for being into table-top games, the girls who were sneered at for having braces or hand-me-downs or old hairstyles, the emos, the skaters, the weirdos, they would clump together, and find their own strength in numbers, find solace in their shared struggle.

                John wasn’t quite so lucky.

                ‘Faggot’ and ‘queer’ and other newfound, even less savory insults were catch-alls, of course, and could be targeted at any of the outcasts, John being no exception. But when word spread that there was _accuracy_ to the words when spat at John, that it wasn’t just mockery but a burgeoning _hatred_ in the voices of his accusers, _everyone_ kept their distance.  It was expected that the similarly-derided would stick together; everyone had to have someone. But to rub shoulders with a supposedly real _faggot_?

                It was social suicide. And John was the bridge you’d jump off of.

                Rarely was he taunted or mocked by any of the other outcasts, but their silence and obvious aversion to even being _near_ him stung more than their words ever could. It was _their_ exclusion that hurt John the most; he’d expected, even before the bullying in fifth grade, that he’d never exactly _jive_ with the popular kids that wielded control like a cleaver wherever they went at school. But he’d at least thought he’d find a couple kids like him, who didn’t quite fit in in general but fit in amongst themselves, who liked video games and computers and were still drooling over the recently-released Nintendo DS that their minimum-wage-paid parents couldn’t afford. But even they never made eye contact with John, and made it abundantly clear that he wasn’t allowed to sit with them at lunch with the way they all hushed their conversation and kept their eyes down whenever he walked by their table.

                What made it all the worse was that it hadn’t been that way since day one. John hadn’t always been alienated from the rest. For the first few months of school, before the rumours had spread, some of them had actually talked to John, and he’d actually enjoyed their company. They were some of the first friends he’d had in years, and bonding with his peers again was fun and stimulating. But once word had spread from the upper rungs to the outer circles, and one of his newfound friends had been shoved and called a “Make-a-Wish for the AIDs kid” in the halls when walking with John, they’d quickly shut him out. They were making themselves bigger targets by being friends with John, at risk of having the same taboo tied to their name. At the end of the day, he understood why he’d been forced into exile, but it didn’t mean he liked it. Every day he walked by them, not letting the surging feelings of hurt and betrayal show on his face.

                John had remained pretty friendless throughout the entirety of middle school so far, and he’d gotten to a point where he mostly accepted that. He’d read books during lunch, and pull out his old Gameboy during recess when the teachers weren’t looking and when the bullies weren’t breathing down his neck. In no way was it his _ideal_ situation, but he was finding ways to cope. Words had turned to shoves long ago, and shoves were slowly turning to punches, and did whenever John was sniffed out when he was alone, hiding behind the school during recess, or when he opted to walk home from school instead of take the bus (which was a special kind of hell on its own), and some of the bullies decided they had nothing better to do than tail him and berate him. But even with the punches he could live. His parents took no particular interest in him, didn’t even know what social standing John was in at school, thinking his isolation was a self-made choice. Even if they had seen a bruise on his arm, or occasionally his side, they probably wouldn’t have inquired as to its cause.

                John’s dad may have even been a bit happy if he’d thought John had got into a fight. He never was much of a fan of his ‘pansy’ of a son.

                Isolation, ridicule, and the gritting of his teeth in the face of both: that was John’s life for the first year and a half of middle school. That was his situation; he simply lived with it. But then, as seventh grade neared its end, as the chill of the winter faded into the warmth and rainfall of April, a new student transferred to Raytown Middle School.

                He was tall, sturdily-built with broad shoulders, messy dark brown hair that fell just a bit past his ears and an annoyed look plastered onto his features – which, John noted in a very straight and platonic way when he was introduced in his first-period English class, were rather nice. His name was Silvester, the teacher said, a new student who’d just moved to Raytown from Chicago.

                John liked Silvester the minute he saw him. Not in _that_ way – he told himself, at least – but because Silvester, unlike almost every other boy John had ever known, seemed to have some _intellect_ behind his eyes. It wasn’t like John was particularly smart, himself, but at least he recognized it, and saw it as a bit of a shortcoming, as opposed to the other guys, who seemed perfectly fine with being a bunch of brutish barbarians. Silvester seemed like he was fed up with being where he was from the second he was there, which John could fucking _relate_ to. As much as wore his ‘I’m dealing with it’ attitude, he’d woken up to his surroundings and had become like every other teen in the angsty pop punk he’d started listening to. He couldn’t wait to skip out on Raytown fucking Missouri. The place was, at the end of the day, dead and depressing, and John didn’t hunger for greatness, but he wanted more than this. Silvester seemed to sense this about Raytown, and John wanted nothing more than to finally badmouth this town with another person.

                The only seat left in the class was next to John, who had settled into a seat in the corner when the teacher announced she wouldn’t be dealing with assigned seating, because he knew no one would voluntarily sit near him, and he wanted to spare everyone the trouble. But now Silvester was slipping between the seats and making his way towards the open seat besides John, and he sat down, and put his bag on the floor, and leaned back in his seat. He turned to John, and John looked at him, and Silvester assessed him briefly, before speaking, voice hushed, as the teacher had begun her lesson.

                “What’s your name?” Silvester asked, seeming only mildly interested.

                “John,” John said, and despite saying only one word, his name no less, he felt woefully out of practice in talking to anyone his age.

                Silvester nodded. “What do you think about this place, John?”

                “Where? The school?”

                “This classroom, this school, this fucking town,” Silvester grumbled. “Take your pick. What do you think?”

                “Honestly, I think they’re all kind of fucking shit,” John said.

                A slightly grin, sly in its way, snuck onto Silvester’s face, and he nodded a little. “Finally, someone with some fucking sense. ‘S like no one else here knows they’re living in some fuck-off town in some fuck-off state.”

                John smiled, and laughed derisively. “Tell me about it, man, I’ve been wanting out for years. Bet this place hardly compares to Chicago.”

                Silvester nodded and sighed. “God, I miss Chicago,” he said. “You ever been?”

                John shook his head. “Never been farther than 100 miles from here, probably.”

                “I can’t fucking imagine,” Silvester muttered. “I haven’t been many places, but at least I've seen a different state. The fuck is there in Missouri? At least there’s things to _do_ in Chicago. What’ve you even got here? Nothing? A fucking diner?”

                “There’s a mall a 20-minute drive from here,” John said, amused, but in agreement with every word.

                “Exactly. Nothing,” Silvester sighed, and took a glance towards the teacher wasn’t paying attention to them. She was older, getting deaf, John assumed, with how little she noticed students talking during her class. She was only writing notes about some grammar rule on the board, oblivious to everything happening behind the first two rows of seats.

                “Why’re you here, then? Seeing as we’re so fuckin’ horrible?” John asked, grinning.

                Silvester chuckled ruefully. “My mom’s from the area, and her dad’s sick, so we moved to be closer to him, but I don’t fucking see why. She could've just moved back here herself, or split her time, and let my dad and I stay in a place with some fucking civilization.” He huffed, and stared at a number of the other students. Finally, he spoke again, acting as if he's stumbled upon some great revelation. “You know, I bet everyone here’s a pig-fucker." He cast a sideways glance at John. "Except you. Unless you are, in which case, I don’t know if I could blame you.”

                John snorted and had to hold back laughter. “Nope, not a pig-fucker, but I don’t know if I could say the same for the other kids. Especially Seymour Johnson.” He lifted a finger to point at a boy sitting on the other side of the room, who was sincerely as dumb as a bag of bricks, and would probably struggle getting a job laying them. “His family raises livestock. He’s so clueless I don’t think he could tell the difference between a girl and a hog if they oinked in his face.”

                Silvester’s chest shook in silent laughter, and he looked to John with a look that was a mix of amusement and surprise and confusion. “You know, John, you’re not half-fucking-bad.”

                “No one else would agree with you,” John said, letting it slip before he could stop himself. He was making a friend for the first time in _years_ ; the last thing he wanted to do was scare him off, even though the taunts thrown at John during passing period and lunch probably would anyway. He wanted to cling to Silvester’s company for as long as he could, even if it wasn’t likely to be around for more than 72 hours.

                Silvester raised an eyebrow. “What? You some sort of a loner or something?” It wasn’t an insult, just a straight question.

                “Not by choice, but yeah,” John said. He might as well be honest now that he’d started down this road. No way Silvester would stick by him if he lied about being in the bullies’ good graces, only for Silvester to find it that was an abysmal falsehood.

                “Who wouldn’t want to be friends with you? By the looks of it you’ve actually got some brains, and going by the looks of every other fuckhead in this building, they could use some.”

                John shrugged, unwilling to admit the real reason, but he couldn’t see a way around it, and even if he could, Silvester would find out in 40-something minutes anyway, when class was over. Or before then, if someone decided to be particularly shitty and throw him a crumpled piece of paper with the word ‘faggot’ or the like scrawled on it.

                “I, uh – I don’t know, really,” he half-lied. “Everyone just calls me ‘faggot’ or ‘queer’ and keeps their distance.” After a moment of pause, he added, quieter and with more hesitance, “They’ll do the same to you if you stick around me.”

                Silvester thought a moment, seeming as if he was weighing his options, then shrugged. “Can’t say I’ve never been called a faggot before. And I don’t know if I want to be friends with someone who probably can’t string a coherent sentence together and would accidentally screw a swine if she looked at him the right way, so,” Silvester cast his gaze back to John, who quickly schooled his features back to neutral from the incredulous hope they’d had moments before. “Guess I’ll stick around you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finally left John in a good place at the end of a chapter!
> 
> Too bad that's only gonna last so long lol.
> 
> Anyway, I don't have too much to say, but I hope you all enjoyed this chapter! Seriously, the support in the comments on this fic have been ridiculous; all of you are so fucking kind. Thank you <3
> 
> Another reminder to maybe read my MH oneshot when it comes out but only if you're a fan because you shouldn't read something you don't like or know nothing about.
> 
> Please, leave kudos and maybe a comment if you enjoyed! Thanks for reading, and I'll see you all next update, which, god willing, should be soon!


	8. Update (new chapter coming soon)

I really didn't want to include another update, at least not without putting out another chapter first, but it's just hit me how long it's been since my last update so I felt the need to update everyone on my current situation.

 

I started up school again a couple weeks ago, and I begin my college classes in a week, and everything has already been pretty stressful. It's my senior year, and I'm graduating a year early, so I've got a lot on my mind right now with everything I need to get done, let alone SAT prep and the like. I'm sure any of you who are going through the process or have already understand what it's like.

 

I was originally going to say all of this, along with an apology, when the next chapter came out. However, a few days ago, my computer hard drive completely died without any warning. I had nothing backed up, nothing saved, and nothing related to this fic saved to OneDrive (I work on Word; I hate Google Docs). Along with losing all of my art, pictures, some schoolwork, and my other writing projects (including a personal project that was 200k+ words) I lost the entire outline for this fic (which had grown rather hefty). Combined with the stress from school, this completely stunted any motivation I had to work on this project (or any others). I'm still getting back on my feet and honestly, I'm in a bit of mourning. A lot of me was on that computer and now it's all on a broken hard drive. It's strange to have yourself boiled down to a small piece of plastic and metal and wires. Hopefully I'll be able to get everything off it one day, but obviously that day won't be soon.

 

This fic will begin updating again _very_ soon, I promise. Regardless of the circumstances, writing has always been a very enjoyable thing for me to do, and is often a huge stress relief when I have the energy to do it. I appreciate you all for bearing with me and keeping up with this story. Over 600 hits and nearly 100 kudos, like, holy shit, that's a lot! - far more than anything else I've ever written has gotten. I sincerely thank every single one of you who has ever left a kudos or a comment; knowing that people enjoy what I write is one of the best feelings in the world.

 

Once again, thank you all, I'm sorry for the delay but I hope to come back strong and I fully intend to follow this fic through to the end. We can't leave these boys in the states they're in, that's for damn sure. Anyway, have a great day/night everyone, and remember: back up your fucking computers, keep eighteen copies of everything, and you'd probably be better off just writing in your email drafts.


	9. Can You Understand My Invisible Words?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John would’ve settled for someone who could just stand his presence: someone who would’ve sat with him during lunch and whatever classes they shared, maybe even during recess as well, someone who would’ve been fine pretending like they didn’t have a clue who John was in the halls, someone who pitied him and spent time with him outside of school once in a while. John would’ve been fine with that. But Silvester had become so much more than someone.
> 
> John has finally made his first real friend, but will he always have that title?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy shit, look who's back! And with two chapters, no less!
> 
> I've finally recovered from the loss of my hard drive, and am back to mostly tip-top shape. The daily routine still takes most everything out of me, but I just reminding myself that it'll be over in December (only for another cycle to only begin anew...). A rough outline for the rest of this fic has emerged, and while I'm not quite as happy with it as I remember being with the old one, I'm still reasonably pleased with how this looks like it's going to turn out. We've got somewhere near ten more chapters ahead of us, and boy, is a lot going to happen! We're going to see John's lowest lows, and, eventually, his highest highs. He's just got a few more things to work through, poor guy.
> 
> I won't keep you much longer. I just wanted to say for the hundredth time thank you for all of the support. The comments on my last update were incredibly kind, and I thank all of you for your continued support of both me and this fic. You all are the reason I'm here doing this, and I couldn't be happier doing it! I hope you all enjoy the next two chapters of Easy Epiphany.
> 
> Edit: also, short hair John anyone? And the TwitchCon pics on his Insta? I'm going crazy out here, just look at them. Fantastic.

                John’s school experiences had improved drastically ever since Silvester had entered his life. The boy was like a beacon of hope in John’s dark, empty life. John would’ve settled for someone who could just _stand_ his presence: someone who would’ve sat with him during lunch and whatever classes they shared, maybe even during recess as well, someone who would’ve been fine pretending like they didn’t have a clue who John was in the halls, someone who pitied him and spent time with him outside of school once in a while. John would’ve been fine with that. But Silvester had become so much more than _someone_.

                Silvester didn’t just tolerate John’s company, he actually seemed to _enjoy_ it, much to John’s great surprise. Even with Gabe, in second grade, it seemed like he’d never really _wanted_ John around, and more that he _let_ John hang around him. It was probably why it had been so easy to ditch him and likely become the tender of the rumour that still haunted and hunted John so many years later. But Silvester wasn’t like that. He spent time with John when he didn’t have to, laughed sincerely at John’s jokes and comments and seemed interested in the things John had to say. He hung out with John at recess, joined him in his hiding spot behind the school as they played Gameboy together (he even let John try out the Nintendo DS his parents had gotten him as a consolation gift for moving). Two weeks after they met, Silvester called up John’s house and asked if he wanted to go catch a movie at the mall (it had almost sent John into shock – no one had ever asked him to do something outside of school before). Silvester constantly surprised John. John would’ve assumed any kid who hailed from Chicago would’ve gone on try and get as many lackeys as possible, and he knew it wouldn’t have been hard for a cool kid like Silvester to have every drooling idiot wrapped around his pinkie finger. But instead he’d opted for the solitary company of John.

                Not only had Silvester’s company improved John’s social life, it had had its own influence on his standing at school. The first few weeks after Silvester’s arrival, things remained mostly the same as the knowledge of John and Silvester’s newfound friendship slowly made the rounds. John was still berated, occasionally beaten, and so far, Silvester had avoided all of it, for which John was glad. He was afraid that the second Silvester got a taste of what he faced every day, he’d jump ship, and leave John to his sorry fate.

                Quite the opposite happened.

                Things seemed to get a bit… _better_ for John. The insults didn’t let up all that much, but everything physical certainly did. Sure, he was still called faggot and queer more than he was his own name, but no one came looking for him with balled-up fists and bloodlust shining in their eyes. It was only a shove against the lockers, a forceful push during gym class or in the halls. Fist would meet flesh only on extremely rare occasions, when John walked home from school alone – instead of with Silvester, as had become their routine – and a boy was in a particularly sour mood. Instead of John’s status pulling Silvester down, Silvester’s status had done something to pull John up, or at least put a small forcefield around him. John had no idea how it had happened – Silvester rarely spent any time with his peers who weren’t John, so John wasn’t sure how he’d gained his immunity. Had Silvester talked to them and convinced them to cut some of the crap? Or had the way they perceived Silvester’s acceptance of John been enough for them to back down a bit on their own? At the end of the day, John didn’t really need an answer to that question.

                Seventh grade came to a close, and time continued to fly by, and before he knew it, John had finished middle school. It was the summer before the beginning of high school, and John’s mind was on the future, namely escaping Raytown, more than ever. John and Silvester spent most of the summer together, and itt felt like the first real “summer vacation” John had ever had; instead of spending every day holed up in his house playing video games alone, he played video games _with_ someone, left the house to walk around in the fields surrounding Raytown, went out to the mall to hang out or catch a movie, all with Silvester. The previous summer had been similar, but Silvester had been away for a month and a half as he and his parents went back to visit family in Chicago. No trip had been planned for the second summer Silvester lived in Raytown, and so John got to enjoy his company fully.

                John had finally found his first real friend, and he was revelling in every moment he spent with the other boy. Silvester _understood_ John, knew what he meant when he said he would do anything to get out of Raytown, to escape the wretched fate that seemed to wait for him if he stayed. Silvester empathized, and sated his hunger for the outside world by regaling stories of Chicago, both his own and his father’s and the rest of his family’s stories, some that Silvester would swear were completely true that John would doubt but be riveted by nonetheless. John knew it was silly and childish, but sometimes he liked to believe that Silvester’s family were part of the mob (and, when particularly fanciful, he wondered if Silvester had threatened his bullies by claiming his family had mob ties, and that they would regret it if they kept being assholes. John rarely let himself think such things).

                One day, when John and Silvester found themselves out in the fields, shooed out of Silvester’s house by his mother, who insisted that they take advantage of the nice weather and stop shooting each other (they’d been embroiled in a particularly heated Halo match), they began talking about what they often did – the future.

                “Can’t wait to get out of this place,” John grumbled, expressing a sentiment he and Silvester sharing and been bating back and forth a thousand times that summer, like a never-ending tennis match.

                “Me too, man. I swear, it’s all I think about sometimes.”

                “Same, here.”

                “So, where do you think you’re gonna go?” Silvester asked, breaking the mould of how the conversation usually went. Usually, one of them said they couldn’t wait to get out, the other would agree, and they’d spend the next however many hours shitting on Raytown and the people in it. John didn’t think in all the time they’d spent talking about how much they wanted to leave, they’d ever talked about where they wanted to leave _to_.

                “I don’t know. A big city, probably. Though I don’t think I’d mind going to some place like Washington, or northern California, with the big fucking mountains and forests and shit. You?”

                “Chicago, probably,” Silvester said, eyes cast up at the clear blue sky. “My mom’s brother works at the university there, so I’ll probably go there, and then after that…” he shrugged. “I dunno.”

                “You mean, like, for a career?”

                “Yeah, I guess. I’m just not really sure. What about you?” he turned to look at John.

                Silvester had already begun to look grown-up, and it wasn’t escaping John’s notice. His features were sharpening, looking more like a man’s than boy’s, and whatever attraction his youth had foretold was suddenly appearing. He’d grown out his hair a little, and his mess of dark, semi-curls framed his face well. His broad shoulders now led to arms which were developing muscle mass, and he’d shot up in height. He was good-looking and intimidating, and unfortunately, John hadn’t been able to keep his feelings locked as tightly as he had before. They were less innocent now, more loud and forceful, and at times like this, when Silvester had his head leaned back, hair falling onto his shoulders, when he looked at John with his piercing eyes, his face illuminated by sunlight, John found it hard to answer even the simplest yes-or-no questions.

                “I – well,” he had to look away, and he told himself over and over it was because he was nervous about his answer, and the fact that he’d never told anyone what he wanted to do, and not because Silvester’s existence made his stomach tighten in every wrong way.

                “I wanna – I want to make people laugh, I guess,” John said.

                “Like a comedian, or something?”

                “I mean, yeah,” John said. “Something like that, I guess.”

                “Nice, dude,” Silvester said, and when John looked back, Silvester was smiling. “You could definitely get on SNL or some shit like that. You’re pretty funny, you know.”

                John smiled, and looked away to hide the blush he was sure was spreading across his cheeks, and he hoped that if Silvester saw it he would just attribute it to the heat. “Thanks, dude. It’s like the only thing I’m decent at besides video games.”

                “And wouldn’t it be great if you could make a career out of playing ‘em?”

                John laughed. “Now who’s the comedian?”

                They continued walking in silence for a while until Silvester spoke again. “Anything you wanna do besides that?”

                John furrowed his brow. He was pretty sure Silvester was trying to get at something, but he wasn’t sure what. “What do you mean?”

                “Well, I mean, I don’t know what I wanna do as a job,” Silvester began, “But I do know one thing.”

                “Yeah,” John said teasingly, sure Silvester was about to make a joke. “And what’s that?”

                “Sleep with a hot girl,” he finished. His tone said he was joking, but something about held a serious, almost threatening malice. With a voice as light as a feather and eyes as cold as stone Silvester looked at John and said, “’Course, you want that too, right?”

                John was already well-versed in pretending to like women, seeing as he lied to himself just as much as anyone else. But the way Silvester was looking at him, like John was some sort of creature that Silvester was observing to prove whether or not he was really vile, almost made the response catch in his throat.

                Almost.

                “The fuck are you talking about? Of course,” John said with so much sincerity, he almost believed it himself.

                Almost.

                “Wanna find a nice cute girl and settle down with her, eventually,” he said, to bolster his point.

                The hateful look in Silvester’s eyes immediately washed away and he laughed. “Of fuckin course you do, Johnny.”

                “What? What do you mean?”

                “You don’t wanna play the field a little, first? See what the big wide world has to offer before you sidle yourself up with some chick?”

                “Well, I mean, I guess so, a little,” John said, a bit embarrassed, and he hoped he could get away with being bashful about the topic by explaining it away with ‘I grew up in the Bible belt.’

                “You and your southern values,” Silvester chuckled and shook his head. “Anyway, sorry for the weird question. Everyone calls you a faggot and a queer – I was pretty sure it was only an insult, just had to make sure.”

                John had never experienced heartbreak before – wasn’t sure if one could if they hadn’t even come to terms with their sexuality or their feelings – but he was pretty sure that this, a feeling that felt akin to his heart being smashed on the ground and every one of his dreams being thrown to the dogs, was damned close. He hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it, still didn’t, even in the moment, but he’d developed feelings for his only friend; feelings his friends had now made woefully obvious were disgusting and wrong. John had bene holding out hope that maybe, just _maybe_ , Silvester would be different. Silvester came from a city, and his family seemed nice, and that alone seemed leaps and bounds better than the situations of every other person in Raytown. But even Silvester thought people like John were below him. So, John figured, maybe he really was just broken.

                “Oh, yeah,” John said, and he forced a nonchalant tone. They were nothing more than meaningless insults, words meant to hurt, not to reveal the gruesome truth. _Of course_ that was the case. “’Course not; damn, dude.”

                “Hey, c’mon, I said I was sorry, man. I just had to ask; my dad would kill me if he found out I was hanging out with a real fag.”

                It was on these words that a part of John’s mind, which he would call unerringly stupid, clung.

 _He didn’t say he_ _was against it; he didn’t say he hated people like that. He just said his dad did. What if… what if he’s hiding it? Just like me?_

The thought seemed revolutionary to John; another boy _just like him_. Finally, someone he might be able to confide in, to be real with. Someone… maybe someone to spend his life with.

                “Nah, I get it man,” said John, choosing his words carefully now that the seed of this idea was sown in the back of his mind. If Silvester _was_ hiding something, not just something but the _same_ thing, he wanted to make it clear that Silvester didn’t need to pretend around him. Was there something he could do, say, to signal to “No fuckin’ different from every other parent here.” He looked to Silvester, wishing that somehow he could hear the silent message between his words.

                Silvester looked back, and gave him a smirk. “And each of them as shitty as the last, huh?”

                Had Silvester just indirectly scorned his own father’s opinion?

                Had he actually understood?

                John couldn’t believe it. His mind flooded with youthful fantasies, and he was carried away by nothing more than a glimmer of hope in a pitch-dark cave. After years of hiding and denying himself happiness, he clung to the first sliver of a chance of having it in his grasp.

                John’s first easy epiphany was also going to be the first death of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I've strayed a bit into fanfic melodrama this chapter, but I've had an idea for a scene like this from the beginning, and I tried to write it as realistically as I could while still setting up everything that's going to come from this one day John spends with Silvester. The rest of the fic kind of relies on it!
> 
> I'll leave all the "please comment and leave kudos if you enjoyed" messages until the end of next chapter ;)


	10. Confession, One of Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John’s voice had become very serious, and Smitty tensed, turning all of his attention towards the call. John rarely got serious, if ever. Even if he had to talk about something serious, he’d approach it seriously but put an amusing spin on it. There was no amusing spin in John’s voice now.
> 
> Smitty and John both tell each other something. Will anything good come of it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have a Smitty POV! The first of probably two. Writing Smitty, while not super different, is quite fun!
> 
> As I said in the notes at the end of last chapter, I tried to keep this as realistic as possible, but there's no real conversations to base this interaction between them on as there is for banter and what not. I went off of the limited amount of personal experience I have with this kind of thing, while also still trying to keep these two in character.
> 
> I forgot to mention this in the notes of the previous chapter, but wow, over 100 kudos and over 800 reads. I'm honestly blown away. Thanks one more time, everyone, for all the support for this fic. I never imagined it would be something close to popular; I'm flattered, truly.
> 
> As always, my representations of Smitty and John are completely fake and are my own; I know nothing of them or their lives and thus this is wholly fake. Not beta'd, barely edited, and I hope you enjoy!

                Smitty’s evening up until that point had been late night editing. Night had always been the time he worked most efficiently, he found, when he knew no one was going to disturb him, and he could crank some music through his headphones at an ungodly volume and then have his eardrums blown out when he paused his music to check a clip.

                He’d been going through his regular routine when his Discord pinged (and he definitely did _not_ get the piss scared out of him when the notification came through at _way_ too loud of a volume, because he’d _definitely_ remembered to turn it down after the first, second, third, and fourth time the very same thing _hadn’t_ happened). It wasn’t weird, of course – most of his friends, especially those in the same line of work, kept the same hours. He tabbed over to Discord, and saw that John was online, and had joined the VC Smitty sat in when he was editing – music was great and all, but he preferred shooting the shit with his friends while he worked above all else, even though it was what he did for a fair percentage of his career, anyway. Smitty smiled to himself. The last time he’d talked alone with John had been a few weeks ago, then a couple days before that, and that had been the first time he’d had a real one-on-one conversation with John in _years_. To be finally able to just talk to John without anyone else around was a relief to say the least.

                Years ago, Smitty had come to terms with the fact that he probably had feelings for one of his closest friends. He and John had an almost tangible chemistry, sharing a sense of humour and, sometimes, it seemed, the same train of thought, and they just enjoyed each other’s company. Smitty loved all of his friends, in a totally platonic no-homo kind of way, but his bond with John just sat a few rungs above the rest. Back in the ‘good ol’ days’ they could sit in a call for hours upon hours, talking jack shit about nothing, just revelling in each other’s company. During recording sessions they bounced off of one another easily, and they fell into bits just as easily during the scant times they got to see each other in person. SMii7Y and Kryoz went together like bread and butter, and it hadn’t taken a very long time for Smitty’s strong platonic feelings for John to turn into something more (especially with all the gay bits).

                This hadn’t been a major revelation for Smitty. He knew he was bi pretty much ever since he’d learned the word; his parents hadn’t given a damn in the nicest way possible, only wanting him to be happy, and taking more of an issue with his at-first precarious leap into the world of YouTube than they ever had with his sexuality. He’d had a bit of an “oh shit” moment the first time he thought of John as more than a friend, but he didn’t make much of a fuss over it. In all the years of their friendship, he himself had never been able to decipher if John’s jokes belied themselves as being jokes, so he’d just let his feeling for John be. They sat there, in the back of mind, being a small pest at times and a strange comfort at others. They’d served as a small source of depression during John’s couple years of what-he-insisted-wasn’t-avoidance-but-totally-might-have-been, but at the end of the day, Smitty just let them exist. If they faded back into friendship over time, it was fine, if they were forever unrequited, there was nothing he could do about it, and if they someday, somehow, blossomed into something more, then fantastic.

                For now, all Smitty was concerned with was just spending some quality time with John while he edited.

                This was nowhere near what he ended up getting.

                “Hey, John!” Smitty said, expecting to get just as jovial a response back. Or perhaps a “how are you cunt,” he wasn’t picky.

                “Oh – uh, hey, Smitt,” John said. His first exclamation had sounded surprised, as if he hadn’t actually expected Smitty to talk – or maybe he hadn’t expected _Smitty_ to talk. Every word following his first was weakly recovered.

                “What’s – are you okay? You sound weird and, well, frankly, drunk.”

                “It’s… possible that I had a, uh, little bit to drink earlier this evening.” Even a deaf man would’ve been able to tell from John’s voice that he’d had a few more than a few.

                “Yeah, is that a little bit to drink, or a little bit too _much_ to drink?” Smitty’s voice came out with a chuckle, but he was concerned for John, nonetheless. It was a Wednesday night; it was very unlikely John had gone out to drink, which meant he’d probably just gotten shitfaced alone in his apartment. Getting shitfaced alone in your apartment on a Wednesday wasn’t exactly a behaviour that incited zero concern.

                “Ah, c’mon, that’s just fuckin details,” John said, a hint of a laugh in his voice. “We’re both agreeing that I drank, an’ that’s all I need to know.”

                “Alright, fine, sure,” Smitty laughed. “So did you get in the VC just to see if I could determine your sobriety, or –?”

                “No, Smitt, I – I need to talk t’you ‘bout somethin’.” John’s voice had become very serious, and Smitty tensed, turning all of his attention towards the call. John rarely got serious, if ever. Even if he had to talk about something serious, he’d approach it seriously but put an amusing spin on it. There was no amusing spin in John’s voice now.

                “Yeah, man, what’s up?”

                “I –,” Smitty heard a muffled thump in the background.

                “John?” Smitty asked quickly, worried John had, like, fallen out of his chair. “You okay?”

                “Yeah, I’m here, it’s just… ah fuck, man,” he exclaimed in what sounded like exasperated frustration.

                “Hey, it’s okay, dude, you can tell me.”

                “It’s not that fuckin’ easy, Smitty, I –,” John’s voice fell off again, and all Smitty could hear was something that sounded like quick, short breaths, and he wasn’t sure if the cause was anger or tears. Smitty got an answer moments later.

                “This is so goddamn hard for me, man,” John managed, and Smitty could hear his voice hitch in a silenced sob. He was fucking stunned. He’d never seen, nor heard, John cry.

                “John, dude, listen to me, man,” Smitty said, anxious to help his friend but unsure exactly how. He wasn’t one of those ‘keep it all repressed, don’t feel emotions’ kind of guy, but he still didn’t feel particularly well-equipped to deal with this kind of situation. He didn’t feel uncomfortable – just frustrated with how fucking helpless he felt. “E-everything’s gonna be fine, dude. I’m here for you, John, I’m your friend.”

                “Fuck,” John hissed, the word sounding like it was said through gritted teeth, so quiet that Smitty wasn’t sure if he was even supposed to hear it. He wondered if he should just keep his mouth closed and wait for John to spit it out.

                “Smitty, I…” Once again the words petered out, but they sounded so heart-wrenchingly anguished Smitty was almost glad they hadn’t continued. However, they were quickly followed by more, this time in a resentful growl. “Why’s this so fucking hard for me to say?”

                “John, please,” Smitty said, trying to keep his voice as soft as possible. That’s how girls comforted people, right? Low voice, nice words and all that? God, it would kill him if he was hurting John more than helping. “You – I mean, you’ll probably feel better once you just tell me.”

                Smitty heard John sniff, and he was silent for a moment before speaking. “You’re probably the best friend I have. Y’know that, yeah?”

                “’Course. You’re one of the best friends I have, too.”

                “Can you – fuck, I sound like a fucking teenage girl.” Before Smitty had a chance to respond, John finished his original thought. “Just, can you promise me it’ll stay that way?”

                Smitty admitted to himself that it was a bit of a teen drama thing to say, but clearly he wasn’t going to criticize John, especially not in the state he was in. Besides, he wouldn’t be making a false promise. He knew he’d stick with John through thick or thin.

                Smitty’s heart beat faster as he spoke. “Yeah, I promise, man. Always.”

                “Smitty, I – I think I – I’m gay.”

                Well… fuck. That certainly hadn’t been what Smitty was expecting. He wasn’t really sure what he _was_ expecting – he got some girl pregnant? hit someone with his car? wanted to quit doing YouTube? – but it… well, John coming out to him tonight was certainly not something he’d been steeling himself for.

                Smitty hadn’t really told any of the guys that he was bi. It wasn’t an active secret he was keeping from them, or from his viewers, for that matter, it was just that since it had never really mattered to him, he didn’t feel the need to tell anyone. If he was dating a girl and his friends knew, great. If he was dating a guy and his friend knew, cool. They had brains; they could put the pieces together on their own. But since Smitty had really started doing YouTube, he _hadn’t_ dated anyone, had barely even been on any dates. He just chalked it up to deciding to focus on his career, and only slightly acknowledged that it had a little to do with his feelings for John. Long story short: John didn’t know he was bi. So, maybe now was the time to tell him.

                “Hey, John… it’s okay,” Smitty said, pretty sure that John was grappling with some serious fucking feelings right now, likely a biproduct of his youth spent in the near-South, and that John needed someone to tell him he was a perfectly normal person. It was rare someone came out in the way that John did and felt completely comfortable with themselves, Smitty was sure. “I’m – I’m really glad you told me, dude. Or, like, you know, that you felt you could.” Smitty waited to see if John wanted to respond, and when they fell into a silent lull, he added, “If it, uh, makes you feel any better, I’m bi.”

                “Really?” John said, as if such a thing were inconceivable.

                “Yeah, man. And look, I never really struggled with it, but like… it’s okay, dude. You don’t, like, have to feel bad about being who you are. Okay?” Smitty knew they were straying into sappy, cliché territory, but he almost felt worried for John’s safety, being quite certain that it had taken him a couple bottles of something – or just one bottle of a much stronger something – and a whole lot of internal struggle to say the words. And while Smitty hadn’t struggled with his sexuality, he had enough experience with people coming out to know that sometimes speaking the words aloud acted less like a lifting of a weight and more like a concrete condemning.

                Smitty just didn’t want John to feel like he was broken and alone.

                “I – thanks, man. For – fuck, for fucking everything,” John muttered. “For like, listening to me ramble and putting up with my shit and fuckin’ – getting in a call with me at whatever time at night and just… thanks, Smitt.”

                “Any time, dude. Like you said, friends forever.”

                “Now who’s the teenage girl?”

                Smitty snickered. “You should get some fucking rest, dude, I don’t know what you drank but I’ll bet you your hangover’s gonna kill you.”

                “It’ll be goddamn _Friday the 13 th_ up in my head tomorrow.”

                “Good luck.”

                “Night, Smitt. Thanks again.”

                “Night, John. And it was no problem.”

                 John stayed in the VC for another few seconds, and it felt to Smitty like the scenes in films when two of the characters say something meaningful and emotional as they’re about to depart, and they look in each other’s eyes for a fleeting moment before turning away. The message signalling John’s departure pinged just as Smitty dismissed the daft thought.

                As he turned back to his editing, Smitty smiled to himself. He hoped that John be the type to feel freed by his coming out, that it would leave him no longer bound to the beliefs he’d been forced to carry, that finally admitting the truth would relieve him of the shackles of his past.

                If only Smitty knew how wrong he would be. For from confessions are not always born the graceful figures of Aphrodites, stepping elegantly from the seafoam, but sometimes born the Furies, charging forth and full of naught but fear and anger and a taste for blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Greek myth references and attempted pretentious prose, anyone?
> 
> Unfortunately, John still has one more major breakdown in front on him. Good news is that once we get over that hill, it'll be almost entirely uphill for poor old John from there on out. He'll finally get to experience some real happiness. Very, very soon.
> 
> I don't want to be a broken record and thank everyone for a third/fourth time in a single update, so yeah, you get the idea.
> 
> If you're enjoying this fic, I always love comments, and kudos are very appreciated too! Hope everyone has a great day/night, and I'll see you all next update.


	11. It's Got Me Going Out of My Mind and Thinking Too Much

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘No, that’s stupid, that’s irrational. There’s plenty more reasons, completely logical, as to why Smitty’s messaging me. Maybe he just messaged the group chat!’  
> Unfortunately, it wasn’t a great time for John to try and rationalize.
> 
> John doesn't remember a damn thing; Smitty fills in the gaps. John probably wishes he never went to the trouble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey look! I'm alive, and I haven't forgotten that this projected existed.
> 
> I won't keep everyone too long, and just say sorry. Life got in the way. I was doing NaNo in November and I had finals during the first two weeks of December, but everything had finally quieted down and I've settled into break. I resume work on what has become a looming beast in the back of my mind.
> 
> One more thank you to everyone for your continued support on this fic, even while I'm gone. We've reached over 1000 reads! I cannot tell you all how grateful I am to everyone who reads this fic, especially the regulars (you know who you are). Having such great support on this project has kept me going, even when the going has been slow.
> 
> Thank you all so much for your patience, and I hope you enjoy this next chapter!
> 
> Obligatory this is not meant to be a representation of these real people, but simply a representation of completely fictionalized versions of them. I tried my best to make it as accurate to their real-life personages/inspirations as possible, but am not trying to imply anything, etc etc.

              The headache John had the next morning was splitting; if his head were the Earth, this headache was the fucking Grand Canyon with how long and deep and wide and goddamn splitting it was. John didn’t know he was even capable of feeling a headache in three dimensions, but slamming god knows how much alcohol does something to you that, again, only a god would be capable of really comprehending.

              Fuck, this was a bad hangover.

              John was surprised that what got him out of bed (he was also surprised that he had somehow made it _into_ bed) was not a wave of nausea, but rather a very impatient bladder. He’d become uncomfortably acquainted with being woken by a lurch in his stomach which would have him rushing to the bathroom – he wouldn’t always vomit, but it got him off to a pretty shitty start in the mornings. Having to piss real’ bad was a pretty welcome alternative to emptying the contents of his stomach. He was pretty surprised that he didn’t actually feel nauseous – had he already dealt with it before he went to bed? His mouth didn’t taste sour, so unless he’d been in the state of mind to brush his teeth – which, honestly, he wouldn’t doubt, he’s done some pretty weird shit while not-sober; brushing his teeth after vomiting would rank very low on the list – the fate of the liquor he ingested would remain a slightly worrying mystery. He didn’t want to think it was possible his body had grown _that_ much of a tolerance (especially seeing as less had made him vomit only two days ago) to alcohol, he didn’t know if that was possible, but he figured that, as with most things in his life, it would do him much better to never think about it. If you don’t pay it any mind, it cant hurt you, right?

              As John took a (wicked fucking long) piss, he did everything he could to recall the previous night’s events. That’s right… it had all started with the _unfortunate incident_ , as he would hereby refer to it as. He’d done something a _little bit_ inappropriate to a picture of his friend – _friend_ – and it was, indeed, unfortunate, but it was only an _incident._ An _accident_. It _wouldn’t_ be happening again because John was probably maybe _definitely_ straight… he’d been high, right? He must’ve been. He couldn’t really remember. Well, drugs make you do weird things, like jack off to – like make poor life decisions. Yeah, John’s made plenty of those (‘ _sober, too_ ’).

              So, the unfortunate incident had occurred, he’d gotten completely shitfaced, and then… what had he done next? He’d been in a fucking state, that’s for sure, and then, then…

              After John had finished pissing he’d grabbed some ibuprofen from the medicine cabinet, and… last dose, fuck – he’d have to Postmates some more later today. At first, he soured at having to see another person face-to-face, but then he remembered he’d pretty much run out of food, so it probably wasn’t a bad idea to do a grocery run. Or, you know, have someone else do a grocery run for him.

              Thoughts of Postmates and trying to recollect what he’d done the night prior were running on dual tracks in his head when a soft ping startled him. A message on Discord. Who the fuck would want to talk to him on Discord, especially at – okay, well, it _was_ already one in the afternoon. _Maybe_ that was an acceptable time for other people to actually be trying to contact him. Jury’s still out, though.

              Busy thoughts momentarily interrupted by curiosity for a moment, John went to investigate the message. He nearly fucking dropped his phone (he did, however, throw it onto the bed like he’d just been told it was infected with cholera) when he saw it was a message from Smitty. What the fuck, _what the fuck_? He knew it was irrational, but his mind was suddenly plagued with images of John pouring out his feelings – _no_ , not his _feelings_ , some sort of misguided… _something_ – to Smitty, or him letting some drunk guilty conscience he didn’t know he had get the best of him and admitting to Smitty what he’d done, or –

‘ _No, that’s stupid, that’s irrational. There’s plenty more reasons, completely logical, as to why Smitty’s messaging me. Maybe he just messaged the group chat!_ ’

Unfortunately, it wasn’t a great time for John to try and rationalize.

              _Smitty: Hey man, just wanted to say thanks for telling me what you did last night. hope you slept well, you definitely needed it, hahah_

              Oh fuck.

              Oh _fuck_.

              What in the ever-loving _fuck_ had he told Smitty last night?

              Why was the message so fucking coy? “what you did,” that’s so fucking vague! What did he even mean by that? Did he mean “thanks for telling me what you told me” or “thanks for telling me about that gross, disgusting thing you did that’s definitely going to destroy our friendship?”

              Oh fuck.

              John was about to go find a bottle to choke when his rational mind stole the reins.

              _‘How about instead of freaking the fuck out over a vague message, you ask him? He obviously knew you were drunk, so it’s not like he’d be surprised that you don’t remember._’

              Fuck, that was a good idea. Damn. Maybe he should listen to his rational side more often.

              _kryoz: hey man, this is kind of embarrassing, but i dont really remember what happened last night. mind providing some context?_

              John had expected to get a message from Smitty explaining, what had happened, but instead he got a simple two-character message: vc.

              That wasn’t good. Shit, that wasn’t good at all. You admit something small and dumb to a friend while you’re drunk and they just text you the details so you text back “lol last time i’m getting blackout drunk”. You admit something _big_ and _serious_ to a friend while you’re drunk and they _call you_ so you can _talk about it_ like it’s some sort of _thing_.

              Goddamn it.

              John joined the voice chat, and he didn’t know if Smitty’s voice was the best or worst thing he’d ever heard.

              “Hey, man,” Smitty said, tone pretty normally chipper. Well then, it couldn’t be _too_ bad.

              “Hey, brother,” John said, voice still crackling from sleep and lack of use.

              “Did you sleep alright? Last night you sounded like you’d need 18 hours to sleep everything off.”

              John laughed in spite of himself, and in spite of the fact that genuine care was crystal clear in Smitty’s voice. “Yeah, I’m fine. Took a piss, took some ibuprofen, I’m set.”

              He heard Smitty laugh softly. “That’s good, man.” After a pause, he said, “So… you really don’t remember anything from last night?”

              “Well, I remember getting shitfaced, and that’s about it,” John said, praying to any god that might still be taking some pity on him that Smitty wouldn’t ask why he’d been so fucking drunk.

              Instead, all Smitty said was, “Fair enough, man, we’ve all had nights like that.”

              “So, you, uh, mind telling me what you can?”

              “No, not at all, it’s just, a bit weird, I guess.”

              John’s stomach sank. “Uh… weird? Weird how?”

              Smitty’s voice had a tinge of a laugh to it. “Well, I mean, coming out usually isn’t a surprise to the person doing it.”

              A panic unlike anything John had ever experienced strangled his entire body. His breath caught in his throat, his fingers had frozen in their nervous fidgeting, and if this nightmare went on for another fucking minute, the blood would cease coursing through his veins. No, no, no, no, this _had_ to be some sort of nightmare, some sort of fever dream, some sort of cosmic joke, maybe the alcohol _had_ finally put him out of his misery and this was his fucking hell –

              And then he thought about it for a second. Really fucking thought about it. And he realized… it was fucking _hilarious_. He wasn’t John, anymore, not this John; now, he was some other John, looking at this sad sack of shit and the horrible, miserable, panic-attack inducing irony of his life. He drinks to escape the truth, and then the drink drives him right into the wide-open, welcoming arms of reality. Throws him onto his best-friend-slash-love-of-his-life’s porch like a soaking wet puppy during a storm to pray for the misery of another human being, that by some small, wretched chance he might just take pity on him, this _thing_ , dripping wet with water and liquor and longing, this thing intruding on his life and making him deal with problems he shouldn’t even have to spare a thought to.

              To think he’d have avoided it all if he’d just put down the fucking bottle and picked up a fucking mirror.

              Absolutely fucking _hysterical_.

              But then it stopped being funny. Because he realized he still was _that_ John.

              “I, uh…” John stuttered out, unsure of how much time had passed since Smitty had last spoken, and honestly, it could have been days, for all he knew.

              “Listen, man, it’s alright,” Smitty said, and once again, John’s fogged brain couldn’t make up its mind on whether Smitty’s words, or his voice, or his presence, or just _Smitty_ , in general, was the most comforting thing in the world or the worst, most threatening and dread-bringing thing since Satan himself. In his paradoxical paralysis, he didn’t say anything.

              Luckily, Smitty kept talking. “To make a long story short, I guess… well, last night you told me you were gay. Kinda sounded like it took a lot out of you to tell me but… I really appreciate it, man. That – that you told me. Please, like, don’t freak out or anything, I won’t tell any of the other guys and I’ll never bring it up, if you don’t want me to. I just… like, it doesn’t matter to me, man. You’re my friend no matter what. And I just wanna, you know, make sure you’re okay and all.”

              It took John a minute to process everything Smitty had said. Smitty was… he was cool about it. Smitty didn’t laugh at him, Smitty didn’t call him names. He wasn’t angry or disgusted or…

              Smitty was still... _Smitty_.

              And that terrified John all the more.

              “Th-thanks.”

              Because that meant the voice in John’s head might be wrong.

              “And… there’s one other thing too. Something _I_ told you last night.”

              _John_ might be wrong.

              “W- what is it?”

             Wrong about his wrongness.

              “I’m… I’m bi.”

              His feelings might be...

              “Oh...”

              They might be  _okay_.

             "...Okay."

              And John didn’t want to think about what that might mean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once more, thank you for your patience, and I promise I'll try to not make you wait as long for the next chapter. I'm heading into a very rocky, busy time in my life but I hope to make a lot of time for writing in the new year. Fingers crossed.
> 
> Again, I hope you all enjoyed, thank you all for the support, and I will see you soon with the next chapter.


	12. You're Making Me Feel Like This All Means Something

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hey there, Johnny boy.”  
> Tall and strong, able to navigate through the high school crowds – and any other crowds – with ease. Clad in a leather jacket, white shirt, and washed-out denims, looking like a perfect copy of an extra from Grease. Thick, dark hair scruffy and slightly outgrown, but perfectly styled and suited nonetheless. The spitting image of the high school heartthrob.  
> That. That was the reason John’s time in high school hadn’t been completely unbearable.
> 
> John and Silvester have remained close friends, even as they enter their final year of high school. But is friends always going to be the word that describes them?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I leave for a month and a half and I come back with a chapter that's mostly filler. Sorry? At least it's 3.5k words of filler, so y'know, do with that what you will.
> 
> As always, my apologies for taking so long. The holidays happened, my semester was finishing up, things were being dealt with. But at least I got a new laptop for Christmas! I now no longer need to type on a separate detached keyboard, which makes writing supine in bed much easier, which makes writing more chapters of this much easier. Expect more updates soon hopefully fingers crossed?
> 
> The outline for the rest of this fic is extremely clear at this point, so at least I know *what* I have to write. We are in for 10-11 more chapters, and I'm aiming to make them all 3k+, hopefully 5-10k for the longer, more climactic ones. It's kind of weird that I'm planning on having the second half of the story be twice as long as the first half, but hey, in for a penny in for a pound. We're putting in the effort.
> 
> This was written on two separate sleep-deprived nights so I apologize if it gets a bit ramble-y in places (cause I think it does). Holy fuck it's 3 am kill me.
> 
> Thank you all for being so patient, and for your comments. Y'all brighten my day every time I see some nice words; thank you, truly.
> 
> CW for homophobic language. 
> 
> Normal disclaimer, only based off of John and Smitty, not meant to represent or imply real events or people, etc. etc.

              “Watch where you’re going, faggot!”

              John felt an elbow connect with his side, and his step faltered. A wave of laughter briefly swept through a small portion of the hallway, the malicious cackles of the perpetrators standing out amongst the reserved chuckles of the few others who had witnessed John’s brief moment of misfortune. Though, could it really be called a misfortune if it happened nearly every day?

              Hopefully. At least calling it a misfortune let John entertain the idea that it was temporary. It was just bad luck – not a routine.

              John was a senior in high school. Everything still fucking sucked. And yet he couldn’t quite bring himself to call everything wholly and undeniably _bad_ – because it wasn’t. For pretty much one reason.

              “Hey there, Johnny boy.”

              Tall and strong, able to navigate through the high school crowds – and any other crowds – with ease. Clad in a leather jacket, white shirt, and washed-out denims, looking like a perfect copy of an extra from _Grease_. Thick, dark hair scruffy and slightly outgrown, but perfectly styled and suited nonetheless. The spitting image of the high school heartthrob.

              _That_. That was the reason John’s time in high school hadn’t been completely unbearable.

              John and Silvester had remained friends throughout the entirety of their time in both middle and high school. After five years they were as thick as thieves (quite literally, at this point – Silvester had led the two of them in an idiotic but ultimately successful klepto mission in their freshman year, when he’d bet John that, with his expert guidance, they could procure enough candy from the town’s general store for their movie night that night for both of them to get sick, and that as long as John stayed cooled, neither would get caught. Surprisingly, Silvester was right twice that day). John had never even imagined that one day he’d have a person in his life that he felt as close to as he did Silvester. If you included time spent in school and excluded time spent in sleep, since they’d met, John and Silvester had probably been together for more hours than they’d been apart.

              Somehow, Silvester’s effortlessly-gained clout had rubbed off on John, too. It hadn’t _polished_ him – middle school rumours still persisted, and John’s “reputation” had been long-since cemented in his year-group’s common knowledge – but it had gone quite a ways to wiping the mud away. He still got shoved in the halls, still had slurs hurled at him, still got nasty glares sent his way, but even John knew that it was better than it could have been. He could’ve been coming home every week, every day, with a new bruise and had perpetual black circles around his eyes. Worse than that, even; if some kid had gotten a particularly bad beating from his dad or uncle or older brother, or if any kid decided it would be a barrel of laughs to spread another rumour to add fuel to the fire, or… well, there could have been any set of circumstances that could have led him to a worse fate than making friends with his at-home first aid kit.

              Whatever John had done to please some divine being to send him a friend and unwitting bodyguard in the form of Silvester – well, John was pretty sure he’d have a lot of thanking to do.

              John couldn’t really recall the last time some kid had seriously laid a hand on him, brought a fist or a foot swinging toward some part of his body, and for that he was more thankful than he knew. And even with the already minimized attention any bully paid him, nothing ever seemed to happen while Silvester was around. With Silvester at his side, the worst he ever suffered was a cruel sneer. Silvester hadn’t even made close friends with anyone other than John – it was simply the cool, confident air of a city kid that provided them both an immunity. Not like Silvester needed immunity – he probably could have snapped his fingers and demanded everyone start paying him a tax for simply gracing them with his presence and they’d have complied. His good looks, sharp stature, and slight city drawl were exactly the type of traits that made the boys respect him and the girls we- weak in the knees.

              “Hey, Siv,” John greeted his friend as he walked through the crowd that wordlessly parted for him. “Ready for another mind-numbingly boring period of chem?”

              “God,” Silvester groaned, drawing the word out. “It’s only fucking October and I already know that that class is gonna make me want to shoot myself by December.”

              “Sounds like you’re writing your note as we speak.”

              “If only that were the way out, Jackie; if only.”

              “You need the class to graduate, right?”

              “If I wanna get into college and get out of this shithole, yeah,” Silvester huffed.

              “Guess the same goes for me too, then,” John sighed. “Too bad – I’d bought the rope and everything.”

              “Thought you swore not to go back to Raytown Hardware after the heist of ’08?”

              “I also swore I’d never eat another Twix, but people change, Siv.”

              Silvester chuckled, and they continued their banter as they made their way through the halls of Raytown High School to their chemistry class.

              That particular class was arranged so that a pair of students sat at a table and acted as lab partners, and, thankfully, they got to choose who they worked with. Their teacher was old, in his mid-50s, and, like virtually every other teacher John had ever had, couldn’t bother himself with assigning seats, assigning lab partners, keeping the side-chats in check or keeping his lessons interesting for the kids who actually might have wanted to learn something. But this was fine with John – who gave a shit about chemistry when you could use the period as chill-time with your best bro, and also sometimes have to mix chemicals to make them change colour? The test answer keys for more than just this class had made the rounds more than a few times. What was the point in trying?

              “We still on for this evening?” John asked in a hushed voice about halfway through class, glancing up from the work he was pretending to do (he probably couldn’t even do it if he _was_ doing it). It was a Friday, and on most Fridays, John went over to Silvester’s and they would watch movies and play video games until they passed out on the floor. If it was a particularly slow weekend, John would stay through Saturday night, as well. During the past couple summers, there had been swaths of days where John and Silvester had only left Silvester’s room to take a piss or have some of Silvester’s mother’s high-class cooking (she was half Italian, and had worked as a sous chef in some fancy Chicago restaurant when she was in college). Despite how genuinely afraid John was of Silvester’s dad (the comment Silvester had made, all those years ago in the field, about his dad’s feelings on ‘real fags,’ stuck with John, even though he didn’t realize it), Silvester’s house had nonetheless become something of a safe haven for him.

              “’Course. I’d never miss a chance to shit on a movie then play video games ‘till I pass out.”

              John half-smiled, trying to make it look cool and slick and not sad and pitifully gleeful and all I-still-can’t-believe-you’re-hanging-out-with-me. He couldn’t really gauge how successful he was, but he guessed it wasn’t much, because Silvester only let out a short chuckle and turned back to pretending to do his work.

              Class let out about 25 minutes later, and John and Silvester only had one more class, which they thankfully shared, before the day was over. It was English, pretty much the only class John didn’t despise.

              John wasn’t great at reading. His focus was far from great if he wasn’t staring at a screen with a controller in his hands (and even then, his mind did a lot of wandering). His mind just moved to quickly sometimes – it was like he could never stop thinking or tumbling down some rabbit-hole-esque train of thought. But that’s what made him good at the other part of English that wasn’t staring at a page of letters: analysis. He had never even tried to be good at it. But his freshman English teacher, Mrs. Redder, had told him he was “extremely gifted at analysis.” He was pretty sure she’d given him back the wrong paper, or read some other John’s essay, but the comments she’d left peppered in red pen across the pages of his essay ­– _his_ essay – apparently pointed toward Mrs. Redder not making a mistake, but being blind or clinically insane. Or maybe even illiterate, Silvester had suggested, when Joh had brought the issue to him. He’d been torn between asking her about it or just letting it be, remaining baffled by it and leaving it be (what he presumed would be an) anomaly in his academic record. In the end he’d gathered his courage and went up to her desk an entire week after she’d returned the papers. To his immense surprise, Mrs. Redder seemed completely in her right mind, and assured John that she meant what she’d written. John could still remember what she’d told him: “You’re clearly good at making connections, and you do it quite humourously, as well.” That had perhaps shocked him even more. Mrs. Redder was the first – and to this day, _only_ – person (omitting Silvester because John was positive that he only laughed at half his jokes out of pity), who had ever said he was funny. At the end of freshman year, when she assigned them all to write about what they wanted to do for careers, John had steeled himself and, instead of the vague stock reply he gave to his relatives of “Go to college, get a job,” he told her the truth, and admitted that he wanted to entertain people and make them laugh. She’d left a smiley face on his paper with the comment “you’ve already made one person laugh.” John had never received a nicer comment from a teacher – hell, probably from anyone who wasn’t his mom. Unfortunately, Mrs. Redder had left at the end of the year, having gotten into graduate’s school, as she told everyone. John hoped she was doing well wherever she was, grateful that the one good soul that had touched Raytown had gotten out before the town made it cold and shrivelled and apathetic, like it did to everything it touched.

              But John digressed.

              Since analysis was one of the few things that came easy to him, John didn’t despise English class. It was also the only class John helped Silvester in, instead of every other class, where they were both the hapless idiot relying on answer sheets and oblivious, uncaring teachers to pass.

              English passed uneventfully – Fridays were usually reserved for free-reading period, a chance for students to catch up on the work or reading for the class. John and Silvester usually spent the hour sitting in the back-row corner shit-talking their classmates in low voices. How little things had changed since the very first English class he and Silvester had shared, five years ago.

              The class passed quickly, once again, and John and Silvester made their way to their lockers to drop off their books and pick up what they’d need for weekend homework before heading towards one of the school’s side exits, which opened onto the parking lot.

              And then something unexpected happened.

              “Hey faggot!”

              At first John payed it no mind. He tried to roll his eyes and do nothing more, but, to put it lightly, it threw him off guard – no one ever yelled anything when he was with Silvester.

              “I’m talking to you, queer!”

              Reluctantly, John turned around, Silvester stopped a few paces later, having noticed John stop.

              “What do you want?” John asked flatly, exhausted and annoyed. All he wanted to do was play video games with his friend on a Friday afternoon, but now some asshole thought it’d be a great use of both of their time to call him gay a couple times for a laugh.

              “So, you answer to queer, huh? Does it mean the rumours are true?”

             The interrupter in question was a kid named Brayden, a senior like John and Silvester. His family had moved from Kansas City back in their sophomore year, and he’d never had quite the same infatuation with Silvester as all the other hick kids did. Kansas City wasn’t glamorous by any means, but he’d certainly had more exposure to “cool kids” like Silvester than the country kid losers of Raytown. John had never really fallen into his line of fire before, but apparently he’d grown exhausted of having his boots licked and was ready to make fun of the town queer.

              John just turned away. He didn’t feel like dealing with Brayden right now, and even he probably wouldn’t try to start anything with Silvester around. Silvester had at least a few inches on Brayden, in both height and how far he could throw him.

              “C’mon, let’s go, Siv.”

              “Oh, so _you’re_ the city kid who hangs out with the fag?” Brayden said, and John froze. No one had ever had the balls to question the company Silvester chose to keep, despite the fact that, to everyone else, it _was_ pretty questionable. John didn’t know if Brayden was incredibly brave or even more stupid.

              “He’s not a fuckin’ fag,” Silvester barked, and John was almost startled. He’d never really heard Silvester talk to someone in a threatening tone – the closest he’d ever gotten was when he’d asked that _one_ question in the field a few years ago. Silvester was pretty fucking good at it, John realized, and he was now very, very, _very_ grateful that Silvester had always been his friend, and not on the opposing side.

              “Oh, so _he’s_ the city kid,” Brayden said, pointing to John, “and _you’re_ the fag?” The finger turned to Silvester, and a wide smirk spread across his face.

              Before John could blink, Silvester had crossed the distance that separated them and Brayden. He _definitely_ had height on Brayden, enough to instantly make the kid shrink back. Silvester held up a mocking finger, pointed directly at Brayden’s nose, nearly touching it.

              “I’m no _fucking_ fag,” Silvester growled, and wow, John was _extremely_ glad Silvester had never wanted John to be intimated by him, because if Silvester had done that to John, he probably would have pissed himself. Silvester pointed at John. “And he isn’t either. So I recommend you keep your fucking mouth shut and don’t listen to what these goddamn hicks tell you, ‘cause they probably couldn’t tell you apart from a fuckin’ chicken.” Silvester stared silently at Brayden for a minute before pushing his chest with a fist – not enough to knock him over, only to lurch back, stumble to catch his footing. Without a sidelong glance, Silvester turned back to John, and without another word, went out the doors to the parking lot. Before Brayden could think again about doing anything, John followed Silvester.

              “Thanks,” John mumbled sincerely, trying not to make a huge deal of it, trying to act like his heart _wasn’t_ pounding out of his chest, trying to act like Silvester standing up for him wasn’t making him reel with so many emotions he couldn’t and didn’t want to name.

              “Don’t mention it, man,” Silvester answered coolly. “Can’t believe that fuckin’ rumour’s still following you around. Don’t they have anything better to talk about than a kid who cried when he was like seven?” They reached Silvester’s car.

              “Guess not,” John said, keeping his tone light and casual as he spoke to Silvester over the top of the car.

              “Well, _that’s_ why I don’t hang out with those losers,” Silvester said, and shot a smile at John before popping his door open and sliding into the driver’s seat. John stood next to the car for a moment more, letting the blush dissipate from his cheeks.

              -

              The red numbers of Silvester’s digital clock read 3:43 a.m. By John’s best guess, Silvester had fallen asleep around half an hour ago, but John had persevered on, dry eyes still locked intently on the screen and sweaty hands still gripped tightly on the controller.

              After the Brayden incident earlier that day, things had continued on normally. John and Silvester had come home to Silvester’s place, played COD until Silvester’s mom called dinner, then watched a shitty movie on Netflix before resuming their gaming. Silvester’s family being quite well-off, he always had the newest games, rather than the shit from three or more years ago, which was more John’s situation. Through Silvester, John had gotten to play all of the big games released that year: Mass Effects 2, BioShock 2, Just Cause 2, Skate 3, Red Dead Redemption, even the new Halo: Reach and Dead Rising 2. He was still eagerly awaiting the release of Black Ops next month, which Silvester had assured John he’d be getting at the latest for Christmas from his parents.

              Usually they would play co-op games, but Silvester was often alright with passing the controller to John and letting him play whatever he wanted while he watched. John often commentated over whatever they were playing, making a funny comment here and there which usually got a laugh out of Silvester. Silvester claimed John was funnier when he was playing on his own, and John was pleased to have an audience.

              It had been just a few months since John had decided his calling: he wanted to be a YouTuber. It wasn’t a real job, of course, he couldn’t make a living out of it, but he knew it was what he wanted to do. He’d only just gotten his own computer, and since then he’d spent hours watching these new enigmas: people who talked while they played video games. John had never imagined there would be a place for anyone to do something like that on, and yet, there it was. He could combine the two things he loved the most: video games and comedy. He knew he couldn’t start making videos of his own until he moved out of his parents’ house to a place of his own, hopefully with decent internet, but it didn’t mean he couldn’t practice. When he was playing games alone he would quietly commentate under his breath, thinking of how to put himself into situations that would make for a good joke. And, while he was with Silvester, the other boy was a good practice audience. He could gauge what went over well and what hit less strong by how much Silvester laughed. By the time he could start making videos on YouTube, he’d already know the ropes.

              John had continued making jokes throughout the night, to good response from Silvester. John had finally realized his friend had fallen asleep when he’d done something stupid in GTA IV that should have had Silvester splitting sides, but he’d gotten only silence. He’d looked over, and his friend had been asleep. John had only smiled softly and reverted to quietly talking to himself.

              Sleep was now getting to John too, and he yawned as he paused the game. He’d leave the game on, since he liked the glow of the screen as he fell asleep and Silvester never seemed to mind. He tossed the controller to the side and stretched before getting ready to try and make himself comfortable on Silvester’s floor, which was only covered by their customary layers of blankets. Before he fully settled, he cast one more glance towards Silvester.

              _I think I’m in love with him_ , John’s weary brain thought.

              John froze.

 _Oh fuck_.

              He didn’t know whether to be appalled at this realization or be relieved that he’d finally had it. Part of him knew he’d been tiptoeing around fully realizing this fact for, well, probably _years_ now, and breathed a sigh of relief at not having to be afraid of it anymore. That part of him was ready to come to terms with it and accept it.

              But the other part of him, the part that was raised in Raytown, Missouri, the part that had recoiled when Silvester had been happy he wasn’t a fag, the part that was scared shitless every time someone threw a slur at him, the part that hated being what it was, was terrified that it was now a reality. There was no more hiding it, no more denying: This was John’s reality.

              It was time to face the music.

              Part of John just wished he was deaf to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed!
> 
> Please leave a kudos if you enjoyed! Comments are thoroughly appreciated and encouraged; they are the wood that keeps my fire for this story burning bright.
> 
> Have a good day/night!


	13. Decisions, Decisions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Instead of the normal smirks and grimaces thrown in his general direction, they were accompanied by eager taps to individuals standing nearby and a cupped hand to the ear. Eyes would widen, expressions reading ‘No way,’ would follow. That could only mean one thing.  
> Rumours.
> 
> Shit goes down at Raytown High. John makes a decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally back! It's been so long. The Muse has not been kind, but I finally sat down and got this chapter done over the past few nights. We're really getting into shit now so hopefully the momentum will be enough to get me to write more! No promises, though. Expect a modern-day John next chapter, then two more chapters of past-John, then we'll finally be modern John the rest of the way through! We're reaching the climax; get ready.
> 
> I feel like I had more to write here, but I can't think of anything now. I continue my streak of posting around quarter to five in the morning, because I apparently hate myself. The things I do for this fic.
> 
> Also, this is the longest chapter this fic has had so far, but hopefully most of the chapters after this will be around this long or longer. This is semi-filler but contains the lead-up to a very, very important event. All I am at liberty to say is: oh boy.
> 
> Note: After doing some research I found out Raytown is like right by Kansas City and in one of the only blue parts of Missouri, but for the sake of this story pretend Raytown is just some absolutely backwards small town in Missouri. My sincerest apologies for misrepresenting the people of Raytown. I’m sure you’re all wonderful people.
> 
> CW homophobic language.
> 
> Requisite note that these are just fake, imagined versions of real people. I in no way mean to pass this off as real events, etc. etc.

              If he was being honest with himself, he already knew.

              John had been aware long before that fateful night that he was in love with Silvester. He didn’t need Silvester defending him and the soft glow of a TV at three in the morning to fall for his best friend, because he already had. He just needed something to push him to realize it.

              Because, if he was being completely honest, this entire ordeal was scaring the shit out of him. How could it not? He’d been called a faggot since before he even _really_ knew what the word meant; being gay had never been associated with anything other than derisive words and mocking faces. The idea of being gay being a good thing wasn’t completely foreign to him, of course, he had access to the internet – but he still couldn’t wrap his head around it. He felt stupid and sheltered because of the concept of there being places where no one had any problem with it still seemed so foreign – why? He _knew_ Raytown was conservative, full of backwards hicks that didn’t represent the rest of world, but even so – there was a part of him that couldn’t just give in and accept who he was. Who he _thought_ he was.

              Because what if he wasn’t?

              What if this was all just a misunderstanding? John had never loved a girl before, but that didn’t mean he _couldn’t_. John had never loved a girl before, so he didn’t know what _love_ even was. What if he just _thought_ he was in love with Silvester? Obviously, he had no frame of reference vis a vis what love felt like, so what if this was completely normal? John also had no frame of reference for what it was like to have a friend. For all he knew, _every_ guy wanted to do everything with his best friend, spend all of his time with him, live with him, stare at him fondly as he fell asleep, was willing to do or sacrifice anything as long as his friend kept that charming, knees-weakening smile on his face…

              Yeah, he was _fucked_.

              -

              John had navigated Saturday morning at Silvester’s, waking up _next to_ Silvester, seeing that pale face and wavy black hair in a completely new light (and not the morning light, which made it bright and golden and another word John couldn’t bring himself to use yet), as best he could. Which, it turned out, was surprisingly well. He found it almost easy to pretend as if absolutely nothing whatsoever had changed about his perception of his feelings for Silvester; maybe he’d just worn the costume so long it felt like his plainclothes. But however well he was managing, he knew he couldn’t deal with it for much longer than breakfast and a late morning of playing video games, so by the time the afternoon rolled around he bid his best and only friend goodbye and returned home.

              He’d tried to fill the remaining weekend with an endless slew of distracting activities. When his mom told him to clean his room, or do the dishes, or help his dad rake the yard, he jumped at the opportunity to do something which might drag his mind away from thinking. He tried to fill his idle thoughts with the task at hand, or with whatever schoolwork he still had to do, and it worked well enough. His mind still wandered to the issue, but he was positive no good would come on dwelling on it. When he was ready to confront the problem, if he ever was ready, and if he ever did, he would think about it then. But no way in hell was he ready now. For now, it was best if he tried to forget it had ever happened and get on with his life. Thinking would solve nothing.

              Returning to school on Monday morning was… interesting. And not at all in the way John had thought (but tried not to think about it) would be.

              Instead of the normal smirks and grimaces thrown in his general direction, they were accompanied by eager taps to individuals standing nearby and a cupped hand to the ear. Eyes would widen, expressions reading ‘ _No_ way,’ would follow. That could only mean one thing.

              _Rumours_.

              John’s entire mission throughout high school, other than graduate and _get the fuck out_ , had been ‘avoid the notice of the general student body as much as possible, what with his reputation and social standing already being what it was,’ meaning that being the subject of rumours was _literally the complete and utter antithesis_ of that goal. What the fuck had he even done to attract anyone’s attention, let alone start a rumour involving him? He only ever talked to his teachers and Silvester, only ever answered the occasional question in class and walk through the halls. He didn’t know if he wanted to know what the rumour was out of sheer curiosity or if he’d be better off staying in the dark until it inevitably died down and he went back to being object of everyone’s general, vague bad vibes.

              Turned out he really wouldn’t get a say in the matter.

              John remained oblivious, though interested, to the matter at hand until the afternoon, when he and Silvester had their first shared class. Instead of being greeted by a chill Silvester, or, at the worst, a mildly-ticked off Silvester who was more than ready to launch into a story about some kid’s bout of sheer stupidity earlier in the morning, John was greeted by a boy who seemed to be bursting at every seam with practiced and yet still poorly concealed rage.

              “Have you heard what the fuck they’re sayin’ about us?” Silvester growled as soon as John approached him. John was a little shocked. He’d never seen Silvester this… _rustled_ before, to put it lightly. Normally, if he was angry, he plastered it over with a smug grin and occasionally a swift punch to the offender. Never before had John seen Silvester seemingly so ready to fly into a rage, his brow furrowed and his fists balled and his back slightly hunched, fury radiating off of him as evident as in a cat with its hackles raised.

              “N-no, I haven’t heard,” John started, voice wavering with how thrown-off he was by his friend’s behaviour. “Listen, Siv, just calm down, wha –.”

              “I ain’t gonna fuckin’ calm down, Jackie; these bitches are slandering us and I’m gonna make sure they get what the fuck’s coming to ‘em.”

              John was disoriented, and now very, very concerned. “What’re they saying, man?”

              “Remember that little incident with that guy on Friday?”

              John certainly did. “Brayden? Yeah, why? They aren’t getting all up in arms about that, are they?”

              “Fuckin’ apparently so,” Silvester muttered. “Apparently, fuckin’ Brayden started saying shit about us _fighting_ on Friday.”

              “That wasn’t a fight,” John scoffed. “An altercation, at best.”

              “Well, he’s saying I got in a fight over the shit he was saying about you. And that’s just fuckin’ bullshit – I’m not defending you when there’s nothing to fuckin’ defend. It’s just stupid. That kid’s just fuckin’ retarded – won’t get over some playground rumour that was started before he even moved here, it’s insane.”

              Despite Silvester’s rambling and more-copious-than-usual swearing, John was pretty sure he could piece together what this was all about through context clues. Evidently, Brayden, probably out of some shame and anger from losing a round to Silvester, had decided to overexaggerate the whole thing, and it was now being painted as a chivalric defending of John’s honour; in other words, _very_ gay and _very_ bad. Whether Brayden had intended this or it had been the unfortunate (or perhaps fortunate, in Brayden’s case) offspring of the game of telephone that was the grapevine, John did not know. All he knew was that the status of everything now was, in big, flashing, red letter, _critically fucking dangerous_.

              “Wh-what are you gonna do about it?” John asked, hoping any waver in his voice could be attributed to the circumstances – or, at least, Silvester perception of the circumstances (two very straight boys being called gay) as opposed to John’s reality ( _bad bad bad bad bad_ ).

              “I wanna throw a couple bunches at Brayden goddamn McIntire’s face, for starters,” Silvester said through gritted teeth, “but if my dad taught me anything it’s don’t escalate until you need to.” His shoulders were going slack. “It’s best we let them talk until they don’t.” His gaze fell to John, nonchalant. “If it’s okay with you.”

              “Y-yeah, fine, cool,” John said, still reeling from the situation and now reeling further from how quickly Silvester had gone from seething to entirely chilled out. All things considered, he did agree with what Silvester suggested; before he knew what the rumour was, he was probably going to do the same thing. Even then, knowing the rumour, it was probably best to let it slowly die. Something as… _big_ as this would likely have a longer shelf-life than any other old rumour, but Silvester fighting Brayden over it would probably only add fuel to the fire, what with the entire basis of the rumour _being_ Silvester fighting Brayden. All things considered, John was surprised with how rational Silvester was being. Silvester _could_ be rational; he just usually preferred to not be.

              “Fuckin’s assholes,” Silvester muttered, turning to walk towards class. John trotted along behind him. “Don’t have anything better to talk about than some rumour that two guys are _fags_.” He spit the word out of his mouth. “Fuckin’ ridiculous.”

              Funnily enough, the only John could seem to fixate on was the way Silvester that word. Like it was some sort of curse. But was he cursing the people, or cursing the word?

              -

              As the week wore on, things remained… tense. John hadn’t expected the rumour to die in some 72 hours, but it hadn’t even showed any signs of being worn down. There had been no other, newer rumours joining the circulation. Everyone seemed to be fixated on it, unwilling to turn their attentions to anything else until the spoils of this little battle had been truly won. Undoubtedly they’d imagined that such a viscous scandal would deliver a fight; until their bloodlust was sated, all eyes would remain on the pair in question.

              While John was somewhat used to being the topic of scathing words, Silvester was far from in. By Wednesday he seemed surely ready to blow a fuse, prepared to punch not just Brayden but the next person that looked at him strangely. By Thursday, he’d slammed his fist on a locker, three inches from a kid’s face, and growled “What are _you_ lookin’ at, huh?” when the kid had snickered in his vague direction. By Friday, the students of Raytown High got what they’d been waiting for.

              John and Silvester were on their way out of school. There was a drive-in movie place about an hour out of Raytown, and they were showing their last movie of the season that night. Halloween was only about a week away, so they were showing _Friday the 13 th_. John wasn’t big on horror movies – take ‘em or leave ‘em, he wasn’t that bothered – but Silvester got a kick out of them, so of course, John was more than happy to go. Maybe he’d pretend to be scared. He was more likely to get an amused chuckle rather than a comforting arm out of Silvester, but it might at least get him an extra round on the Xbox later that evening.

              They’d resumed their normal chatty banter as they were leaving school, which John felt like they’d been woefully neglecting. Neither of them had really been in the mood for idle, stupid chatter in the past week, but coming into the weekend gave them, or it gave John, at least, a small sense of hope. Hopefully everything would calm down with everyone having a couple days away from school. If not, at least it was two days of solace, free from all the bullshit they’d been getting. John could pretend that his feelings for Silvester were okay.

              They were about to leave when the sound of heavy footsteps echoed through the halls behind them. The background noise and conversations of the other students that still loitered around the halls instantly ceased. John didn’t want to but knew what he was going to see when he turned around.

              The posturing form of Brayden McIntire stood a few yards behind them.

              “You’ve been avoiding me,” Brayden said, as if he had something, _anything_ on Silvester. As if this was anything more than a desperate ploy to take down someone who’d never said a word to him, anything more than a frankly sad grab for attention and power in a 300-student high school in rural Missouri.

              “I ain’t been avoiding shit,” Silvester said, voice flat, and it was almost more terrifying than when it was dripping with malice. “Thought I told you to keep your damn mouth shut.”

              “Well, you know, I wanted to, but I just couldn’t!” Brayden said, holding out his hands as if saying ‘what was I to do?’

              “Yeah?” Silvester said, still sounding thoroughly disinterested. He sounded like he was commiserating with the problems of a rich kid’s goldfish.  “Had to tell everyone you nearly pissed yourself in fear? Wanted to brag about picking a fight you immediately ran away from? Or were you gonna say those bruises _weren’t_  from your old man and that you gave as good as you got?”

Brayden’s cool demeanour cracked; his eye twitched, and when he had practiced this in the mirror he had clearly expected it to go much more in his favour.“ Nah, man. I _had_ to let everyone know to congratulate the happy couple.”

              Before anything else, the thought that Brayden probably proudly came up with that line days ago crossed John’s mind, and he found that thought amusingly pitiful.

              However pitiful it might have been, it got the job done. Without a second thought Silvester was on Brayden, and before anyone could blink, a solid punch had been thrown into Brayden’s face.

              When Brayden recovered from the shock – and really, it had been a _hard_ punch, and John wondered how he’d never seen Silvester punch someone or something before, because how was he that fucking good at it? – he had a hand to his cheek, a mixture of anger and actual shock on his face.

              “What the fuck?” Brayden growled as he tried to throw a punch in Silvester’s direction, but the boy easily dodged and returned a harder and much better-aimed hit to the other side of Brayden’s face. Brayden, unable to stop his momentum, stumbled into the lockers, where Silvester picked him up by the collar and held him against the metal.

              “You learn your fuckin’ lesson?” Silvester said, but he was so quiet John had to strain to hear him. The entire time he’d been stock-still, watching the whole thing play out in front of him like a movie. The other kids in the hall had done the same, but with a noted lack of worry. Some of them had run to grab their friends at the first rumble of trouble and were just returning, fire in their eyes.

              “Why the fuck you defending him, huh?” Brayden hissed. He smirked. “He givin’ you somethin’ a girl can’t?”

              Silvester slammed him against the locker, and Brayden grimaced.

              “ _I’m_ not a faggot. _He’s_ not a faggot.” Silvester seemed poised to kill the kid where he stood, if it would get his point across. John wasn’t sure if he was glad for the defence or… well, to put it plainly, afraid. “Get it through your thick fucking skull before I have to crack it open and put it there myself.”

              Brayden seemed ready to spit back a retort, or just spit on him, but he seemed to think better of it, and slackened. Silvester seemed to take it as a sign of acquiesce and started to let go. While his guard was down, Brayden took the opportunity to knee Silvester somewhere between the groin and the stomach. Silvester doubled over, and fear filled John for an entirely different reason.

              Brayden took another swing at Silvester, hitting the top of his head, and Silvester stumbled back. He staggered for a minute, and Brayden seemed ready to strike again – hit, kick, do something to get Silvester to the ground and prove that he’d won – but Silvester drew himself up in just enough time to sway out of the way of Brayden’s incoming fist. He took a step forward and used his momentum to bring a heavy hook into Brayden’s cheek. Without pause, he swung his other hand into Brayden’s stomach, then tripped him as his feet looked for purchase. He crashed to the ground, and John knew that that was the sign that Brayden had lost the fight.

              John came back into himself, realized that he’d drowned out everything as he focused on the fight. The barbaric shouts and whistles of the other teens who’d gathered to witness what they’d been waiting a week for finally hit his ears, and he now wanted nothing more than to get the hell out. Silvester stood above Brayden, breathing heavily, his hands still clenched into fists. But then they loosened, then dropped, and without waiting for… well, for something, John was sure Silvester would have been greeted with some sort of accolade from his peers for winning a fight quite handily, he turned and stalked in John’s direction, in the exit’s direction, only indicating that he was fine with John following with a small nod of his heads as he passed. The crowd hardly noticed, far too caught up in the rush of adrenaline to actually pay any attention to the winner if he demanded none, and as John walked away he could hear the voice of a teacher, yelling something about a commotion. John quickened his pace and went after Silvester.

              Silvester was already standing by his car by the time John caught up with him.

              “What the fuck, man,” John sighed, rubbing his hands together in the cold. It seemed a silly thing to worry about, like trying to keep dinner warm while the house is on fire. “That was insane.”

              “The kid was asking for it,” Silvester growled, his tone defensive.

              “Of course he was!” John said, not wanting Silvester to misconstrue his words. “I wasn’t trying to say that. I just meant that… fuck.”

              “Thought we’d be able to get out of this without making a scene,” Silvester muttered, looking out at the road, away from John, from the school. “Guess Brayden fuckin’ McIntire’s ego’s just too big for that.”

              “Doubt it’ll be too big for anything for a while,” John noted idly, following Silvester’s gaze. The road was empty. “Not after a loss like that.” There was silence, for a moment. “Sorry,” he murmured.

              “What in the fuck for?” Silvester asked, and he almost sounded amused.

              “You keep getting caught up in this shit. All ‘cause of me,” John said, and he hated that he felt tears pricking at his eyes. He kept them down. “Don’t know why you do it.”

              Silvester let out a huff of laughter. “’Cause everyone here is insufferable, Jackie, case in point. You’re actually funny and actually smart, and if some idiot calls me a fag ‘cause I hang with you, then fuck him. It’s all lies, anyway, let them eat that shit up if they get off on it.”

              John smiled. “Thanks, man.”

              “Don’t mention it.” Silvester turned to John. “Now, you still down to catch that movie?”

              -

              John didn’t pretend to be scared during the movie. Instead, he just enjoyed Silvester’s company. Enjoyed _Silvester_. Made note of the way he ate his popcorn, the way he leaned forward in his seat when he was getting into it, the way he reacted to scares, the little comments he made during the film. He riffed with him, a couple times, when Silvester said something funny and John tried to make a bit out of it. They did it often when they watched movies at home, or when they played video games, and John loved it. Was getting good at it, too. It was going to get his famous on YouTube (he hoped). And he had Silvester to thank for it.

              The movie finished early in the evening, as far as it concerned two teenaged night owls, so John and Silvester decided to go on a drive before heading back to Silvester’s. They could take some of the backroads back to Raytown, and some parts of Missouri were pretty picturesque, all things considered. Good company could make any view nice, John thought.

              The radio droned quietly in the background, playing a song off of one of Silvester’s rock mixtapes. It was Nirvana right now, John was pretty sure. Out here you could really only get the most mainstream, shitty pop or country on the radio, so CDs were a must. Silvester had music on his iPhone, but his car wasn’t new enough to have an aux plug-in. They almost always talked when they were in the car together, so music was secondary.

              Somehow, they got to talking about the future again. They hadn’t done it in a while, John thought. As they’d gotten older there’d been other things to talk about, so the incessant speak of what they’d do when they finally ‘got out’ had fallen to the wayside. Video games, movies, classes, real shit like the _news_ ; that stuff had found its way into their daily conversations, occupied more of their time than it once had. But every once in a while, they would talk about the future. It was a comfortable groove to fall into; a safe thing to talk about that they both knew would leave them happy and hopeful. They needed something like that after the day, the _week,_ they’d had.

              “It’ll be so great when we get out,” Silvester said.

              John, arm propped on the window ledge and staring out at the sky, nodded. The stars were so bright out here, in the middle of nowhere. “Finally fuckin’ free,” he said. “We can do anything.”

              Silvester sighed. “I’ll finally get back to Chicago. People’ve got their heads screwed on _straight_ there. They’re fuckin’ _sane_.” A moment passed, then Silvester glanced over at John, exhaustion mostly gone, replaced with a playfully quirked eyebrow. “You know what I mean, Johnny?”

              John just chuckled and gave a small nod of his head. “Totally, man.” And then a second later, it hit him.

              Silvester had come to his aid today. Not just to help him, but to actually _defend_ him. He took a knee to the groin and punch to the face for John – he’d insisted, in the aftermath, that he was okay, and John had begrudgingly believed him – just because people were calling them names. And now Silvester was talking about getting out, going back to a place where people had the right idea about things.

              Was there a chance?

              Was it possible that Silvester returned his feelings?

              No, it couldn’t be – even if Silvester _was_ … well, _that_ , how could he fall for someone like John? Silvester was cool and suave and slick and rich and he was _Silvester_. John was _John_.

              But Silvester had said that John was funny and smart. Had said it before. He willingly spent most of his time with John, had for the past few _years_. He’d taken a punch for John. John didn’t doubt that he would do it again.

              John looked over at his best friend. His face was illuminated by the moon and the glow of his headlights, his eyes were cast on the road but he was clearly lost in thought, his mouth was silently mouthing the lyrics to the song that was playing, his fingers tapping along. He looked over at John looking at him, then looking away with a small laugh and a small smile.

              John made up his mind.

              John was going to tell Silvester.

              John was going to confess.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Btw, Silvester calls John "Jackie" because Jack is often a nickname for John. It kind of just... happened when I was writing them last chapter, and I felt like it totally fit, so here we are.
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading, and for all of your comments! If you enjoyed, please consider leaving kudos and commenting! If I haven't replied to your comment just know that each one of them make my day, your support is amazing, and thank you. Have a great day/evening/night!

**Author's Note:**

> I'll have the second chapter up as soon as possible. If you want it out sooner, please leave me nice comments and/or bully me into writing. I hate disappointing people so just keep that bit of information in your back pocket and apply it when necessary. Thanks again for reading!


End file.
